We built Hearth, a free Discord alternative for Windows (voice, screen share, roles)

Hearth is a free desktop chat app for Windows: servers, text and voice channels, DMs, calls, camera and screen sharing. We shipped v1.1.0 this week, and this post is the honest version of how it was built and what it does and doesn't do yet.

Links: website · download (installer or portable exe) · join the official Hearth server

Why another Discord alternative?

Mostly because we wanted one that felt like a plain desktop app again: one window, fast, no Nitro upsells, no game-activity tracking, and a UI we actually control. Discord is great at what it does; we just wanted something smaller that we could shape for our own communities.

What is in v1.1.0

• Servers (we call them communities) with categories, text channels and voice channels, invite links that never expire if you want them to, and a Discover page for public ones.
• Real-time chat: messages land in under a second between clients, with reactions, replies, edits, @mentions (click one to open the person's card), typing indicators and read state in DMs.
• Friends and DMs, with one-to-one calls that support camera and screen sharing.
• Voice channels: join from the sidebar, see who is in there, mute/deafen, turn on camera, share a screen or a single window.
• Roles and moderation: right-click a member to toggle roles, role pills on user cards, per-channel permissions (read-only announcement channels work), kick/ban, and a moderation log.
• Welcome messages, off by default, with {user} and {server} placeholders.
• Accounts: email + password with verification, or Google sign-in. A library of built-in avatars so nobody has to upload a photo on day one.
• Light and dark themes, an in-app updater, and both an installer and a portable exe.

How it is built

• Desktop shell: Electron, with a React + TypeScript renderer. Icons are Lucide.
• Backend: Postgres with row-level security, so permission checks live in the database rather than only in the client. Realtime message delivery rides Postgres change streams.
• Voice and video: WebRTC through a LiveKit server. The desktop app requests a short-lived token from an edge function that checks you are actually a member of the channel (or the DM) before it signs anything.
• Packaging: NSIS installer plus a self-contained portable build; the updater checks a small JSON feed and verifies the SHA-256 of what it downloads before swapping itself out.

Things we want to be upfront about

• Windows only right now. Linux and macOS builds are possible with the stack, but they are not tested, so we are not shipping them yet.
• Not code-signed. The first time you run Hearth, Windows SmartScreen shows "Windows protected your PC". Click More info, then Run anyway. Signing certificates cost real money; it is on the list.
• The source is public, but there is no licence file yet. So please do not call it open source until that is sorted; "source available" is the honest term today.
• Small team, young project. Expect rough edges. The official server has a #bug-reports channel and we read it.

What is next

Message search, file attachments in DMs, server-wide notification settings, and a proper mobile companion are the big ones people have asked for. If you try Hearth and something breaks, tell us in #bug-reports or open an issue on GitHub.

Thanks for reading. If you run a small community and want a chat app that stays out of the way, give it a spin.