QElement

QElement is an alternative desktop app implementation for Element (formerly known as Vector and Riot) which uses the Qt Web Engine instead of Electron.

Supported Features and differences to the Electron version

Desktop Notifications just like the Electron version, including sound.
A functional system tray icon which just works™ (Electron has a very very horrible system tray implementation).
Respects your operating system file pickers (KDE, GNOME, whatever) while Electron has Gtk file pickers hardcoded.

Issues

Clicking on the desktop notification may not work depending on your desktop environment. Investigation is ongoing, could be Qt bug or not.

Limitations

Native extensions made for the Electron version can't be used in QElement and never will be. When using QElement only the JS/WASM OLM implementation for E2E is available.

TODO

Probably show a counter in the notification tray icon, currently just a red circle.

Building

mkdir build && cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
cmake --build .

How to use?

QElement requires the built web app found at the element-web repository; the extracted Electron webapp.asar works too. Make sure a config.json file is available in the web app root. By default QElement will look for the web app in /opt/Element/resources/webapp, but the location can be customized in the config file found at ~/.local/share/QElement/<profile>/preferences.ini.

Default Configuration

[app]
sysTrayIconEnabled=true

[element]
webroot=/opt/Element/resources/webapp

Installing

For binary releases I only support flatpak on Linux. My applications are hosted on my own flatpak repository.

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists magiruuvelvet https://flatpak.magiruuvelvet.gdn/magiruuvelvet.flatpakrepo
flatpak install gdn.magiruuvelvet.QElement

magiruuvelvet/qelement