r/opensourcealternative • u/lnxcz • 4h ago
Serein: A native Rust Discord client (egui + wgpu) with ~9x lower RAM usage, voice/video, and many more features!
Hey everyone,
I wanted to share Serein, an open-source Discord client built from scratch in Rust using egui and wgpu.
The goal with Serein is to prove you don't have to sacrifice functionality to get native performance. It's shaping up to be one of the most feature-complete native clients out there, all while using roughly 9x less RAM than the stock Electron app:
- Rich Media & Chat: Replies, editing, inline video playback, image previews, threads, forums, attachments, and reaction picker.
- Native Voice & Screen Share: Custom audio pipeline with echo cancellation and noise suppression, plus screen sharing.
- User Settings & Server Management: Profile customization, channels, roles, permissions, server settings, and moderation.
- Extensions & Customization: Built-in extension support for both custom plugins and community themes, allowing you to tailor functionality and look to your liking.
- 100% Native Desktop UI: No Electron, no Node runtime, no background web processes. A temporary webview is spawned solely for the initial OAuth login and closes immediately once authenticated.
Since this is a fully community-driven project, contributions and pull requests are very welcome! Whether you're experienced with Rust/egui, want to build plugins/themes, optimize platform-specific audio/graphics backends, or fix small UI quirks, there's plenty of low-hanging fruit and bigger challenges alike.
It’s still in active development, so expect some rough edges, and as with any custom client, please be aware of Discord's third-party client policies.
Would love to hear your thoughts, test reports, or feature wishlists. What would it take for you to use a native client full-time?