Variance

A Matrix client that aims to be user-friendly and provide an experience similar to Discord. It's a hard-fork of Cinny.

• Contributing

Notable features

• Markdown preview like Discord
• More keybinds like Discord (esc to focus input and scroll down, alt+arrow to navigate rooms, back/forward navigation, etc)
• Better markdown support like Discord
• Indicator for when a message is still being sent, like Discord
• Threads
• Element-compatible theming
• Private read receipts

Getting started

A web app is available at https://variance.matdoes.dev and is updated on every commit.

To host Variance on your own, build it with yarn build and serve the dist/ directory. To set default Homeserver on login and register page, place a customized config.json in webroot of your choice.

Local development

We recommend using a version manager as versions change very quickly. You will likely need to switch between multiple Node.js versions based on the needs of different projects you're working on. NVM on windows on Windows and nvm on Linux/macOS are pretty good choices. Also recommended nodejs version Hydrogen LTS (v18).

Execute the following commands to start a development server:

yarn # Installs all dependencies
yarn dev # Serve a development version

To build the app:

yarn build # Compiles the app into the dist/ directory

Running with Docker

This repository includes a Dockerfile, which builds the application from source and serves it with Nginx on port 80. To use this locally, you can build the container like so:

docker build -t variance:latest .

You can then run the container you've built with a command similar to this:

docker run -p 8080:80 variance:latest

This will forward your localhost port 8080 to the container's port 80. You can visit the app in your browser by navigating to http://localhost:8080.