WhatsApp for Linux

An unofficial WhatsApp desktop application for Linux.

About

WhatsApp for Linux is an unofficial WhatsApp desktop application written in C++ with the help of gtkmm and WebKitGtk libraries. Check out wiki for further details.

Features

Features come with WhatsApp Web
- WhatsApp specific keyboard shortcuts work with Alt key instead of Cmd
Zoom in/out
System tray icon
Notification sounds
Autostart with system
Fullscreen mode
Show/Hide headerbar by pressing Alt+H
Localization support in system language
Spell checking in system language. You need to install the corresponding dictionary to get this working i.e. hunspell-en_us package for US English
Open chat by phone number

Using WhatsApp for Linux

The application is available from a number of Linux distributions:

Dependencies

cmake >= 3.12
intltool
gtkmm-3.0
webkit2gtk-4.1
ayatana-appindicator3-0.1
libcanberra
libhunspell (Optional for spell checking)

Build & Run

Development

# Create a debug build directory and go into it
mkdir -p build/debug && cd build/debug

# Build the project
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr ../..
make -j4

# Optionally, to update the default translation file
make update-translation

# Run
./whatsapp-for-linux

Local installation

# Run inside the build directory once the application is built
# You'll probably need administrator privileges for this
make install

Uninstall

# Run inside the build directory if you want to uninstall all files
# install_manifest.txt file is created when you run make install
xargs rm < install_manifest.txt

Packaging

Debian

# Don't forget to update the version number (0) in debian/changelog before this
# Build the package.
dpkg-buildpackage -uc -us -ui

Snap

# Build the package. Pass --use-lxd option in a virtual environment
snapcraft

AppImage

# Make sure that the application is installed into the `<Project Root>/AppDir` directory
make install DESTDIR=../../AppDir

# Build the package
appimage-builder --skip-test --recipe ./appimage/AppImageBuilder.yml