Spacebar is a free, opensource selfhostable discord-compatible chat, voice and video platform.
- Discord-compatible (Use all your custom clients/bots with minimal changes)
- Selfhostable (Server)
- Open Source (GitHub Organization)
- Configurable (Configure every aspect and limits to your needs)
- Decentralized (no abuse of power and doesn’t have a single point of failure)
- Extendable (secure and cross-platform plugin system)
- Themeable (cross-platform theme system with design editor)
- Secure (publicly audited and hosted FOSS software for transparent foundation in terms of security)
https://docs.spacebar.chat/faq/
Currently there is no voice or video support in any Spacebar instance. This is a very difficult feature to get working, especially given that we must implement it the exact same way as Discord.com for client compatibility. We would be incredibly thankful for any assistance.
Damn.
Discuss without voice, might aswell use IRC
Yeah I’d love to move my gang off discord but getting them to go back to team speak or vent is not happening
Mumble is another strong, open source, self-hosted option.
If only it didn’t looked like a 20 year old software.
Maybe it’s just me but I think the Mumble UI is way better than the Discord UI
I don’t know about the UX, but if you want peoples to use your app, it need to look nice.
Some of the best stuff in the world looks like it’s 20 years past a prime that isn’t, because they’re truly good eternal.
oh no!! good thing that doesn’t impact anything
Especially on mobile.
Same, if only teamspeak supported screen sharing / streaming, then it would be fine.
My group is on Teamspeak. They are supposedly adding it this year, but it’s been radio silence for months.
Well the minute they do and it works for sharing videos as well so we can watch YouTube as a group then we will drop discord super quick. I won’t want to host it at mine but I’ll happily pay for a vps for it.
Why not just use Matrix? I thought it was the goto FOSS and decentralized Discord alternative.
Matrix doesn’t offer the same experience as discord. I’m sorry but it doesn’t. I set up my own to compare to see if my friend group would like it, and it was quite a step backwards. Even in it’s best platform element it was missing a lot of stuff from discord.
So, things like this I’d be very interested to watch. Revolt looked the most promising but it didn’t offer federation, and I wasn’t going to make everyone have a separate accountjust for our server
So this will be interesting. I will need at least voice to get them to come over, but I’ll watch this project closely
Voice & screensharing seems to be the thing holding all of my friends chained to discord
I mean, it’s a valid reason. I originally joined Discord back in 2016 because of it’s easy to use voice. It became the standard for voice chat. Before that I had been using the Xbox party chat and other garbage voice systems.
We were using Skype… Dark days.
Element seems to have voice and video chats in beta right now, and they plan to implement it into the Element application, so it looks like it is on the way at least.
I think the original question could be about the protocol. Why not use Matrix as the protocol for the project? No one is doing the work to bring a Matrix-based Discord alternative because they’re a) on Discord b) creatin IRC face-lifts like Element c) refusing to quit IRC d) making projects with bespoke protocols like this one. It’s incredibly frustrating.
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This one is clearly made to look like slack, which is great I need to try this out. Just wish someone would make one that looks like disc. And then matrix needs screensharing support.
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TBH both disc and slack have their downsides, disc more so, so I’m fine if they just take the best of all worlds.
But yeah, screensharing is the deciding factor for me. As much as all my friends hate discord, we use screensharing all the time (it’s just a bit jankier getting it working on Linux).
https://element.io/app-for-productivity
Element x does screen sharing
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Yeah, I saw that element is using jitsi under the hood for its screensharing. If that makes for a seamless user experience, that’s great. It’s been like 10 years since I last tried Jitsi, but it was not smooth.
I haven’t, but I’m going to try it out!
i can agree with regards to a proper threads/forum feature which is not that amazing in element right now… but it appears we are moving fast towards element call integration everywhere. this means p2p video rooms if i am not mistaken. is there something else except user friendliness in ux that could be better?
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My instance is pretty fast. Run Conduwuit as the server, problem solved
i cant confirm that. especially in the light of the new sliding sync implemented in elementx. it’s a nightmare for admins but for users it should be fine
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Spacebar looks great, and is exactly what I want, but it doesn’t look close to production ready yet
Yep it’s not near finished. This is one of those projects that’s sat in my “keep an eye on it” bookmarks for a good while, I figured I’d post it to get some attention on it, because it does look very promising.
I test installed it in Proxmox in a Debian 12 LXC for the sever part, it was fairly easy, just run three commands. The client was as well, but failed to do something with the email during registration. It has a while longer to go I think. But I put it in my bookmarks to visit every so often as well. :)
is there any sort of way to have the chat logs be public and searchable? the worst thing about discord being a walled garden is that all the info on it can only be accessed by a discord client.
Do you still have to use discord in order to use this?
I think the idea here is that you are running your own discord, and only people with modded clients can use it because its not approved by discord.
I’ve been trying to find a more privacy-friendy alternative to Discord but I keep coming back to the issue of screen sharing. No other platform does it as smoothly.
The best I’ve found is using Parsec with some virtual audio cables to avoid voice feedback.
Why pick this over ArmCord?
Armcord is a discord client. Spacebar is a discord alternative (server+client)
So then no interaction with Discord?
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Just now heard of armcord which I’m going to give a shot on Linux here soon but looks like armcord is just a client, while this is a server as well.
There is also vesktop on Linux aswell witch is what I use. But I’ve tried armcord and webcord before.
is it… of value having something like this while matrix and element is a thing? i find these things interesting, but not sure if they are justifyable to deploy…
For me, the benefit of discord is not the text chat but the voice aspect. With push to talk/voice activated transmission and low latency for gaming.
The voice features of matrix are more of a conference call thing.
Until this gets implemented in matrix (not sure if ever) I’ll continue hosting mumble (or TeamSpeak)
interesting… but i understand the appeal of quickly jumping into a voice room. other than that, of course not as fancy of a ux experience, mumble would be quite suitable here… .
what about the screen sharing? muble for voice, matrix for communication but i cant find any suitable replacement for video
This is cool to see, though I am sceptical, if it is a good idea to create a drop-in discord server, because this does not allow for the project to add E2EE “easily” without eliminating the drop-in capability.
It’s a convenience over privacy thing. If the api is discord compatible you lose the e2e on that channel / server, or make the api e2e but then existing bots need modifying
I could see this being a toggle
That would require a custom client and eliminate the drop in feature. Sadly just adding a toggle does not work :/
