Caprine Is A Privacy-Focused Facebook Messenger Desktop App
Anyone still using Facebook Messenger? In case you do, here's a Facebook Messenger desktop application that you might like.
Caprine is an Electron Facebook Messenger application that's focused on privacy. I know that Facebook and privacy shouldn't really be used in the same sentence unless they are accompanied by 'lack of', but Caprine tries to improve this, by preventing Facebook from tracking the links that you click.
The application also ships with options to hide the last seen / typing indicator, and a way to quickly disable receiving desktop notifications.
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| Caprine tray icon notifies of unread messages (Ubuntu 18.04 with Gnome Shell) |
Caprine includes quite a few features on top of that, besides the usual Electron desktop integration found in similar applications, like desktop notifications, unread messages badge on top of the tray icon, and so on. Like support for 'Work Chat: Messenger for Workplace' for example, which can be selected from the Caprine File menu. Or support for sending code blocks using the Markdown syntax.
Since it uses Electron, Caprine runs on Linux, Windows, and MacOS desktops.
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| Caprine using a dark theme and compact mode |
Dark and compact modes are also available, along with an option to toggle the window vibrancy effect on Mac OS, if that's your thing.
Other Caprine features include:
- Keyboard shortcuts
- Image paste confirmation: the app asks you before sending images from the clipboard to avoid pasting the wrong image
- Can be launched minimized (to the tray)
The application doesn't yet support multiple languages (for the tray, menu, and so on), but this feature is currently being implemented.
