Whatsie 6.0.0
Whatsie 6.0.0 is a complete, from-scratch rewrite on Qt 6 / Qt WebEngine. It rebuilds the app on a clean, layered, tested foundation and brings first-class Windows support alongside Linux — while keeping the same app, the same data, and the full release history.
WhatsApp Web desktop client for Linux and Windows. Not affiliated with WhatsApp or Meta.
⬇️ Install
Linux
# Snap — any distro with snapd
sudo snap install whatsie
# Flatpak — from Flathub
flatpak install flathub com.ktechpit.whatsieWindows (x64)
Download from the assets below:
whatsie-6.0.0-x64.msi— installer (Start Menu + Desktop shortcuts, in-place upgrades).whatsie-6.0.0-windows-x64.zip— portable build, no install required.
Windows 10/11, 64-bit. The build bundles its own Qt and the MSVC runtime, so there's nothing else to install. It is not code-signed yet, so SmartScreen may show an "unknown publisher" prompt on first run.
✨ Highlights
- Cross-platform. Linux (Snap, Flathub) and Windows (x64) from a single codebase, with a Windows MSI installer and a portable zip built by CI.
- A clean rewrite. Layered architecture (
core → web/platform → ui → app) with a unit-test suite — easier to maintain and extend. - Robust WhatsApp Web integration. All page tweaks are injected scripts anchored to stable structure, not obfuscated class names, so a WhatsApp redesign degrades a feature gracefully instead of breaking the app.
- Self-healing graphics. Automatic fallback from a broken Wayland GPU path to XCB, and automatic recovery from a GPU context-loss storm (with a one-time notice so you know why hardware acceleration was turned off).
What's included
Appearance
- Page-level light / dark / follow-system theme, synced with WhatsApp Web.
- Interface scale and page zoom controls.
Privacy & security
- Message blur — blur chat text and media until hovered (off / light / medium / strong), for over-the-shoulder privacy.
- App lock — passcode with lock on start, on hide, and after an idle timeout.
- Per-profile isolation —
--profile <name>gives a second account its own session, settings and cache in a separate window.
Desktop integration
- System tray with quick actions, and start-minimized-to-tray support.
- Native notifications — desktop portal inside Flatpak,
org.freedesktop.Notificationsotherwise, with a tray-balloon fallback and contact avatars. - Downloads hub for files received in chats.
- Spell check (where dictionaries are available).
- Global and in-app keyboard shortcuts, plus full-screen hints (press Esc / F11 to exit).
- A Settings button in WhatsApp's own nav rail, so the app is reachable without the tray.
- "Whatsie" shown as the linked-device name on your phone.
Reliability
- A custom, theme-aware error page (no more raw Chromium error screens).
- Graphics-backend fallback (Wayland → XCB) and GPU self-heal after a context-loss storm.
- Single-instance handling and graceful shutdown.
- In-app bug reporting that attaches diagnostics (including the last crash) to a pre-filled GitHub issue.
Platform notes
- Voice calls, photos, WebM/VP8/VP9 videos, and screen share work on all platforms.
- Windows — sending MP4 videos: the official Qt WebEngine binaries ship without the proprietary H.264/AAC codecs, so WhatsApp rejects MP4 video uploads on Windows. Photos, WebM/VP8/VP9 videos, messaging and screen share are unaffected. (Qt links FFmpeg statically, so there's no drop-in codec pack — this needs a codec-enabled WebEngine build, planned for a future update.)
Under the hood
- Qt 6.11, Qt WebEngine, CMake.
- Linux builds run on the KDE runtime (Flathub) and the
kf6-core24content snap; the Windows build is MSVC x64. - This release supersedes the previous codebase while preserving its history — earlier tags and releases remain reachable.
Built with Qt 6 and Qt WebEngine. WhatsApp is a trademark of WhatsApp LLC / Meta; Whatsie is an independent client and is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.