A Discord client without the web browser.
Discord's desktop app is a whole ass Chromium running Discord's website, and it sits at about 800 MB of RAM doing nothing (insane, I know right?!?). That annoyed me enough to write my own in Rust.
Yapfast does the same job (doing nothing) in about 40 MB.
Version 0.1.0, a beta, out 16 October 2026. Windows 10 and 11. On Linux, build it yourself for now; an AppImage is coming. Third-party clients are against Discord's terms, so read about the risk before you link your account.
Fast af, light af
Click the icon, stop the clock when you can read your messages. Discord took 8 seconds on my PC. Yapfast took 0.22, because it shows the messages it saved last time and catches up while you read.
Ready after 8 s
Memory, signed in and idle
In a call with the window open it's about 60 MB, 20 of that for noise suppression, and the GPU renderer takes about 120 MB.
I timed them on 15 October 2026, both signed in to the same account, on the second launch so Yapfast had its cache. Your times will depend on how many servers and DMs you have. I haven't filmed Discord starting yet, so its side is a clock over a stand-in for its update screen. How I measure.
Voice and Go Live
Voice channels and DM calls, with noise suppression and a volume for each person. You can go live, watch other people's streams and turn on your camera. The call stays up while you read other channels.
GIF favorites
Yapfast keeps your favorites on disk as 40 KB clips, so they show as soon as the picker opens instead of waiting on the network; you won't be cringing waiting to post the GOATed GIF ever again.
Themes
10 come built in. Bonfire is Discord's own colors. In the editor you can make your own, and the window changes as you type each color.
Everything else
Works
- Servers, channels, DMs and group DMs
- Sending, replying, editing, reacting, pinning and attaching files, with Markdown, embeds, custom emoji, stickers and spoilers
- Threads beside their channel, and server search with Discord's filters
- Friends, friend requests, your status, blocking and ignoring
- Running a server: channels, invites, kicks and bans
- Notifications, unread markers and member lists
- 10 themes or your own, and six sets of quiet sounds, because Discord's pings make me jump
Not yet
- Forum channels
- Push-to-talk and the soundboard
- Polls, activities and server settings
- Making server folders, and joining a server by invite
- Forwarding as Discord does; Yapfast sends the text again
- Animated custom emoji in messages, which show their first frame
- A macOS build
- A Linux AppImage, then the AUR (coming soon, dw)
Use Discord in a browser for these until then. The Discord plan has the rest, in the order I'm working on it.
Not for you?
- Vesktop if you want plugins. Yapfast doesn't have them yet. They're coming, don't worry, but until then use Vesktop, which comes with Vencord's.
- Discord in your browser if you need something from the "Not yet" list. It has all of it, and you have a browser open anyway.
- Ripcord if you'd like something plainer still. It's native too, closed source, and it does Slack as well.
Will Discord ban me?
Probably not, but I can't promise it. Third-party clients, Yapfast included, are against Discord's Terms of Service. In practice Discord rarely bans anyone for using one: the accounts that get banned are almost always spamming or running automation. Yapfast only does what you click, and keeps to the same limits Discord's own app does.
If losing your account would be a disaster, don't use any third-party client, this one or another. And don't post screenshots of it in a server whose moderators might ban you for it. Yapfast tells you all this again before it shows the sign-in code.
Where your messages go
Straight from your PC to Discord, or to your Matrix server. I don't run a Yapfast server, so nothing in between could keep a copy.
- You link your account by scanning a QR code with Discord's phone app, so Yapfast never sees your password.
- The login token stays in your system's credential store, and only ever goes to Discord. Unlinking signs that session out and deletes it.
- It sends no analytics or crash reports, and doesn't check for updates.
- Pictures and GIFs load from wherever they're hosted, such as Discord or Tenor.
- This site has no cookies or analytics either.
What about Matrix?
Yapfast started as a Matrix client, and Matrix still works: encrypted rooms, Spaces as servers, and voice over MatrixRTC, in the same window as Discord. The Windows release is Discord-only for now, so build it from source to get both.
After that I'd like Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger in there too. No clue when, but hopefully at some point :p
Other questions
- Is it a wrapper around Discord's website?
- No. There's no browser engine anywhere in it or near it. Yapfast talks to Discord's API itself and draws its own window with Slint and Skia.
- Why not Tauri?
- A Tauri app still runs a website, just in your system's web view instead of a bundled Chromium. Still a hell no from me; the browser is exactly the part I wanted gone.
- Did you use AI to write it?
- Yes: Opus 5.5 for most of the code, and 6.1 Sol and 6 Astra for adversarial review and some really unintuitive bugs (networking protocols combined with VP8 are a little above my pay grade for a side project :D). But it's not "Claude, make a Discord client, make no mistakes". I've daily driven it for weeks, profiled it with perf, read the code, and tuned the UX to my muscle memory, so switching is as painless as possible.
- Can I use my Vencord plugins?
- No; they need a JS runtime, and Yapfast's API would be waaaay too different anyway. Plugins aren't here yet, but they're coming, and once they are, open source ones could be ported over.
- How is it different from Serein?
- Serein draws with wgpu, which takes more memory from the start. Yapfast uses Slint, so it can render on the CPU or the GPU, and the CPU is WAY cheaper. It also does Matrix (build it from source for that, for now), DeepFilterNet noise suppression on top of RNNoise, voice gates, and the cached GIF picker (my favorite feature :p). It's still missing some things, like forums, polls and push to talk.
- Does it work on Linux?
- Really well, on X11 and Wayland, screen sharing included (I run Hyprland). There's no download yet: an AppImage is coming, then the AUR. Until then, build it with Nix; it's one command, I promise (and hope :D). The README has it.
- Mac?
- I'd love to make and support a Mac version, but I don't have an Apple machine to test it on for now, sorry :(
Source
Yapfast is free software under the GPL, version 3 or later. It's built on Slint, Skia, LiveKit, matrix-rust-sdk and DeepFilterNet, and all of it is on GitHub, including my patches to Slint.
It's a 0.1 beta. I daily drive this, so it at minimum has to be very usable, but expect rough edges here and there, and please open an issue when you hit one, so I can fix it.
The noise suppression isn't perfect (if you know a better open source library, PLEASE tell me), and connections drop now and then, about as often as on Vesktop or the official app.