Messenger, back on your desktop.

Completely. No price tag, no subscription, no ads, no paid tier. Chatpane is open source under the MIT license - made by one developer who missed having Messenger on the desktop.

No - you sign in with your usual account, and all your chats are just there. Anything you send in Chatpane shows up on your phone too, and the other way around.

No. Meta discontinued their desktop app, so Chatpane is an independent, open-source replacement. It shows you the real Messenger - the same one from your browser - in a clean window of its own, with the Facebook clutter tidied away.

Chatpane adds zero tracking of its own - it even blocks Facebook's telemetry by default. The Mac version is signed and notarized by Apple, updates are verified before they install, and the complete source code is public for anyone to inspect. Your messages still travel through Messenger itself, so Meta's usual terms apply there. Windows builds are currently unsigned and may show a SmartScreen “Unknown publisher” warning.

Yes - it's the full Messenger, so calls, group chats, reactions, photos, and everything else work like you'd expect.

Most chat apps ship an entire hidden web browser inside. Chatpane uses the one your computer already has - so it downloads in seconds, starts in a blink, and goes easy on your battery.

Facebook changes its markup from time to time, and that can occasionally break a feature. When Automatic Update Checks is enabled, Chatpane finds fixes automatically; you choose when to install - and you can always tell us what broke.

Meta shut down messenger.com in April 2026. Messenger now lives inside facebook.com, next to the Feed and Reels. Chatpane opens facebook.com/messages in its own window and hides the rest.

Yes. End-to-end encrypted chats work like any other chat, and notifications, the unread badge and conversation export cover them too.

Open the Apple menu and choose About This Mac. If it says “Chip Apple M…”, download the Apple silicon version. If it says “Processor Intel…”, download the Intel version.

Chatpane isn't code-signed for Windows yet, so SmartScreen warns about an unknown publisher the first time you open it. Click More info, then Run anyway. Only download Chatpane from this site or its GitHub page.

On Windows, use the portable .zip: unzip it anywhere, such as your Downloads folder, and open Chatpane from there. It needs no administrator rights. On a Mac, Chatpane runs from any folder, not just Applications.

Very likely: Chatpane comes in 30 languages, including Arabic and Urdu, which read right to left. Its own menus and Settings follow your computer's language, and Settings → General → Language picks another. Messenger itself follows the language of your Facebook account.

On a Mac and on Linux, the web engine Chatpane uses can't complete passkeys for Facebook, so that step keeps loading. If a passkey is your only two-factor method, add an authentication app or SMS in Meta's Accounts Center, under Password and security → Two-factor authentication. Then choose Try another way on the passkey step and enter the code.

Chatpane is a small Rust shell built on Tauri 2 that opens the official Messenger web app in your operating system's own WebView. At page load it injects a focused stylesheet and typed scripts that hide Facebook's surrounding chrome and add the desktop features - notifications, badges, shortcuts, themes. No bundled browser engine, no Electron.

Messenger content is processed only on your machine, only where a feature needs it - turning a new message into a native notification, counting unread chats for the badge, blurring names for screen sharing. Chatpane has no servers and phones home to no one; the only network calls it adds are update checks against GitHub Releases. Off-site links open in your browser with Facebook's tracking redirect stripped first.

When Automatic Update Checks is enabled, Chatpane checks GitHub Releases at startup and then every hour, every 4 hours or once a day, as you choose. When a signed update is available, it shows you the release notes. You choose whether to download, install, and restart; Chatpane cryptographically verifies the update first. macOS downloads are also Developer ID signed and notarized by Apple. Windows builds are currently unsigned, so SmartScreen may show “Unknown publisher.”

The .deb and .rpm packages are about 4 MB because they use your distro's WebKitGTK. The AppImage has to carry its own copy to run anywhere, which is why it weighs around 90 MB. If your package manager is an option, prefer it.

Yes - brew install --cask kristofferR/tap/chatpane, and the same cask token works on macOS and Linux. Already dragged Chatpane.app into /Applications? Adopt it with brew install --cask --adopt kristofferR/tap/chatpane.

Of course. With Rust, Bun, and the Tauri prerequisites installed: clone the repo, then bun install and bun run build. The injected scripts are typed TypeScript under inject/src/.