ZapZap – WhatsApp Desktop for Linux

📌 About

ZapZap brings the WhatsApp experience on Linux closer to that of a native application.
Since Meta does not provide a public API for third-party applications, ZapZap is developed as a Progressive Web Application (PWA), built with PyQt6 + PyQt6-WebEngine.

📌 About notifications and icons on Flatpak: See docs/notifications.md

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📥 Download

• Flathub
• AppImage

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✨ Features

ZapZap extends WhatsApp Web with additional features:

🎨 Appearance

• Adaptive light and dark mode
• Fullscreen mode
• Custom window decorations
• Interface scaling adjustment (ideal for 2K/4K screens)

⚡ Usability

• Keyboard shortcuts for main options
• Adaptive system tray icon (notifies new messages)
• Background process support
• Drag-and-drop functionality
• Ability to select a custom folder for downloads
• Temporary folder for opening files

🛠️ Extras

• Spellchecker with language selection via context menu
• Customizable system tray icons
• Option to choose a folder for custom dictionaries
• Setting to disable the native file selection dialog (Hyprland)
• Custom CSS/JS with global + per-account override
• Reorganized Settings Panel
• Added Performance section

🧩 Customizations

• New Customizations page in Settings
• Supports Global customization and Current account customization
• Account mode supports inherit global settings + optional override
• Users can:
  • import .css and .js files
  • create and edit CSS/JavaScript files in dialogs
  • enable/disable each imported CSS/JS file independently
  • import CSS/JavaScript from any https:// URL
  • open customization folders directly
• Supports many userstyle files (.user.css) by extracting WhatsApp-targeted @-moz-document blocks
• Page actions: Save, Save and reload, Reload

Customization files are stored in the app local data path under:

• customizations/global/css
• customizations/global/js
• customizations/accounts/<id>/css
• customizations/accounts/<id>/js

Reserved for future extension support:

• customizations/extensions

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⚙️ Development

Requirements

• Python 3.9 or higher

Fedora 43 System Dependencies

If pip install -r requirements.txt fails due to dbus-python:

sudo dnf install -y dbus-devel pkg-config gcc python3-devel

Then:

pip install -r requirements.txt

🚀 Running ZapZap

python run.py [dev|preview|build] [options]

🔧 Development Mode

Without translations:

python run.py dev

With translations:

python run.py dev --build-translations

👀 Preview Mode

Flatpak:

python run.py preview --flatpak

AppImage:

python run.py preview --appimage

With translations:

python run.py preview --build-translations --flatpak 

📦 Build AppImage

python run.py build --appimage <version>

Example:

python run.py build --appimage 6.0

📦 Build Flatpak Onefile

python run.py build --flatpak-onefile

Output:

dist/com.rtosta.zapzap.flatpak

📦 Install as Python Module

pip install .

Uninstall

pip uninstall zapzap

🔧 uv Tool

uv tool install . --with-requirements requirements.txt

📦 Packaging

• Flatpak
• AppImage

🌍 Translation

ZapZap supports translations. If your language file is missing from the po folder, submit a pull request or open an issue.

🤝 Contributions

Contributions are welcome! Please submit a pull request with any improvements or changes you wish to propose.

📜 License

This project is licensed under the GPL. See the LICENSE file for more information.

💖 Donations

PayPal: Donate via PayPal

Pix: Donate via Pix

Ko-fi: Donate via Ko-fi

📬 Contact

Maintainer: Rafael Tosta

Email: rafa.ecomp@gmail.com