Whatsie: WhatsApp Web in a native Qt window on Linux

A native shell around a web view

The framing sentence is in the README: WhatsApp Web in a real desktop app. That is the entire architecture. Qt WebEngine renders the site, and a Qt 6 application provides the window, the tray icon, the settings dialogs and the file handling around it.

The pitch is explicitly anti-Electron, and the reason given is speed and weight rather than ideology: it is a thin native shell, so it starts fast and stays light. At 3419 stars and 105 forks it is one of the more popular Linux desktop wrappers, and unlike most of its category the README documents Windows builds as well as Linux ones, with an msi installer and a portable zip for x64, both bundling their own Qt runtime.

The project is MIT licensed and written in C++20 against Qt 6.11. It is not affiliated with WhatsApp or Meta, which the README states in a footnote rather than leaving ambiguous, which is the correct thing to do for a project in this space.

The last push was 2026-09-21 and version 6.1.1 was published the same day, so the release line tracks the source.

What the desktop integration actually adds

The features are grouped into three headings, and the first one is where the value over a browser tab sits.

Desktop integration gives you native notifications that include the contact's avatar, a system tray icon carrying an unread badge with mute and do-not-disturb, single instance handling with a --profile flag for multiple accounts, autostart at login, and handling for whatsapp: and wa.me links plus a --new-chat command that opens straight into a conversation. That last group is the part a browser cannot do at all.

The web experience section covers light, dark and follow-system theming kept in step with WhatsApp Web, voice, video and screen-share calls with Wayland handled through the desktop portal, a real downloads window with history, drag and drop plus paste for attachments, zoom and interface scaling, optional smooth scrolling, and system-language spell check.

Version 6.1.0 added a further desktop touch: an unread badge on the taskbar or dock, not just the tray icon, and a Settings option to drop Chromium's 60 FPS cap so animations match your monitor's refresh rate. That one is off by default, with the README noting it uses more GPU and CPU, which is the correct default for a laptop on battery.

The interface is also translatable into German, Spanish, French, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese and Russian, with Automatic following your system locale.

Privacy controls that are more than a checkbox

The third group is the one that distinguishes this from other wrappers, and it is where the project spends its engineering.

There are per-site controls for camera, microphone and location, which is a genuine improvement on giving the whole WebEngine view blanket access. There is a privacy blur that hides message text and media until you hover, which is useful in a shared office or on a screen anyone can walk past. There is a passcode app lock using PBKDF2 that covers every window, configurable to lock on start, on hide, or after a period of idle. And there is HTTP and SOCKS5 proxy support with authentication.

The app lock is worth understanding precisely, because it is the kind of feature that either covers everything or nothing. The README says it covers every window and can lock on start, on hide, or after idle. Those three triggers together mean you can have it behave like a screensaver, like a privacy screen when you switch away, or like a device lock at boot.

The last item in this group is unusual. There is a built-in Report a bug flow that pre-fills a GitHub issue with diagnostics and the last crash if there was one, while keeping your messages private. Reading a stack trace from an application that renders a website is exactly the context a maintainer needs and exactly what a user would never assemble by hand.

Installing on Linux and Windows

Three package formats are offered for Linux, all one command.

# Snap — any distro with snapd
sudo snap install whatsie

# Flatpak — from Flathub
flatpak install flathub com.ktechpit.whatsie

# Arch Linux (AUR) — builds from source
yay -S whatsie      # or: paru -S whatsie

An AppImage and a self-contained .deb with Qt bundled are attached to the latest release, so a Debian or Ubuntu system can install without a Flatpak runtime. The AppImage needs making executable with chmod +x before running, and the .deb installs with sudo apt install.

On Windows the README lists two artifacts, an msi installer with Start Menu and Desktop shortcuts and in-place upgrades, and a portable zip that requires no installation. Both target Windows 10 and 11 on 64-bit and carry their own Qt runtime, which means you do not need a Qt install on the machine.

The choice between Flatpak and Snap has real consequences beyond disk space. Snap confinement changes where the Qt WebEngine dictionaries live, and 6.0.4 documents exactly that failure: on the Snap the app could silently load no dictionaries at all because it inherited an empty system dictionary path, so spell check appeared to do nothing. The fix was to fall back to its own bundled dictionaries. If spell check matters to you, check that it works immediately after installing.

Spell check with your own dictionaries

Spell check is more involved than it sounds, because Qt WebEngine uses Chromium's compiled .bdic format rather than a system Hunspell dictionary.

Six languages are bundled, covering English, German, Spanish, French, Italian and Russian, and 6.1.0 also fixed the settings dialog listing only the first few bundled dictionaries instead of all of them. You enable more than one at a time as of 6.1.0, and they are all checked together.

For any other language, the Open folder button in the same settings section takes you to the right directory, which differs per packaging format: the Snap path is under ~/snap/whatsie/current/.local/share/ktechpit/whatsie/qtwebengine_dictionaries/, the Flatpak path under ~/.var/app/com.ktechpit.whatsie/data/ktechpit/whatsie/qtwebengine_dictionaries/, and everything else at ~/.local/share/ktechpit/whatsie/qtwebengine_dictionaries/. You drop the .bdic file in and reopen the dialog to pick the language.

If you only have a Hunspell .dic and .aff pair, the README gives the conversion command that ships with Qt WebEngine, qwebengine_convert_dict taking the .dic and producing the .bdic.

Building from source and reading the layout

Building needs Qt 6.11, CMake 3.21 or newer and a C++20 compiler. The README gives two routes, and the first is the interesting one.

sudo snap install kde-qt6-core24-sdk kf6-core24
scripts/dev-build.sh --tests
scripts/dev-run.sh

Installing the KDE Qt 6.11 snap SDK gives you a build environment that works on any distribution, rather than requiring you to install Qt 6.11 from your distribution's repositories, which most do not carry at that version. The second route is a plain CMake build against a system Qt.

cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo
cmake --build build -j
ctest --test-dir build --output-on-failure

The source layout is the clearest part of the repository and explains why the project can be tested at all.

- src/core is pure logic, settings and services, on Qt Core only, so it is unit-testable without a display. - src/web holds the WebEngine profile, page and view, the injected scripts and the JavaScript to C++ bridge. - src/platform is the OS backends behind interfaces, covering notifications, autostart and files. - src/ui is QtWidgets, the main window, dialogs, tray and lock screen. - src/app is the application object, the CLI and single instance handling. - tests holds Qt Test suites including an offscreen smoke test, and snap holds the packaging built in CI.

Packagers can also trim the dictionaries at build time with a WHATSIE_DICTIONARIES define, which defaults to bundling every Hunspell dictionary found on the system.

Editorial conclusion

Whatsie's argument is not that it reimplements WhatsApp, it is that a browser tab is the wrong container for it. Everything in the project follows from that: native notifications instead of web ones, a real downloads window, system proxy settings, a passcode lock that covers every window, and a diagnostics bundle attached to bug reports. The cost is that you inherit WhatsApp Web's own limitations, since this is a WebEngine view and not an API client. Install the Flatpak or the AppImage rather than building first, and if you do build, the snap SDK route is the one the project documents for any distribution.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. keshavbhatt/whatsie on GitHub
2. License: MIT
3. Project website
4. README
5. Releases