I've been building a third-party cross-platform Discord client called kind (kind is not discord) in C++ and Qt 6. No Electron, no web wrapper. A proper native app for Windows, macOS, and Linux.The UI always loads instantly. On first load, things take as long to appear as Discord's network responses. On subsequent loads, everything comes from cache and is validated against REST in the background. It feels as fast as opening a plaintext file.It's further along than I expected when I started. What's working right now: gateway with exponential backoff and reconnect, REST with per-route rate limiting, SQLite-backed cache with async reads/writes, full Discord permission resolution, and a composable block renderer that handles every Discord message type including embeds, attachments, reactions, stickers, and components. There's a full markdown parser, an async image cache with memory LRU and disk persistence, an unread and mute state system that survives restarts, and 370 passing unit and integration tests.Voice is a post-launch problem. So are Nitro features.Is there actually an audience for this outside of Linux power users? I know that's where the pain is most acute, but I'm genuinely curious whether Windows users would switch for the performance alone or whether the official client is good enough there that it doesn't matter.
FL score
out of 100
Verdict
high confidence
Competition
8
competitors found, emerging market
Trend
No signal yet
A technically impressive native Qt/C++ Discord client targeting performance-hungry users, but faces high platform risk and intense competition from free alternatives.
The pain
The gap
Build angle
Strengths
Questions about this idea?
FlyBot reads the scoring and gives you a second opinion on “Is there any interest in a native Qt/C++ Discord client?”.
Risks
Next steps
Fly Labs Method
Is the pain real, is there a gap, is it the right time, can one person build it.
A native Discord client addresses a real pain of Electron performance, but the space for third-party clients is already crowded with free options, and the risk of account bans is a major deterrent to adoption and monetization.
Value Equation
Dream outcome and how likely it feels, against the time and effort it costs.
The idea has a clear value proposition of performance but faces significant market and platform risks that limit its monetization potential.
One-Person Business
Curiosity pull, identity fit, and a path from free value to paid for a solo creator.
High technical fit and clear problem, but significant challenges in audience reach, product simplicity, and monetization due to platform risk and competition.
Viral Frameworks
Hook strength, shareability, and how cheaply it can be tested.
Addresses a clear performance pain, but target audience reach, business model, and significant platform risk make it a challenging micro-SaaS.
Builder Lens
Evidence the problem exists, timing, defensibility, and a model that fits on a napkin.
Strong demand from a specific niche for performance, but significant platform risk and competition in the third-party client space.
Why this verdict
Five lenses, one composite. How scoring works
The angle
This weekend
Who is already there, emerging market
An alternative Discord client made with C++ and GTK that aims to mimic the official web client to avoid detection.
Pricing: Free and open source.
A third-party Discord client for Linux desktops built with GTK4 and libadwaita, focusing on a smooth, native experience.
Pricing: Free and open source.
A lightweight, native Discord client written in Python with Qt, aiming for a lightweight experience.
Pricing: Free and open source.
A native, high-performance Discord client built with C++23 and Qt 6, designed as a lightweight alternative to the official client.
Pricing: Free and open source.
A native Discord client written in Swift using SwiftUI, with a goal of feature parity with customization and quality-of-life additions.
Pricing: Free and open source.
A native Discord client for macOS built 100% in Swift, aiming for Discord-like UI and experience with native app performance.
Pricing: Free and open source (supporters get early feature releases).
A custom app that aims to provide better performance and improve Linux support for Discord.
Pricing: Free and open source.
A commercial, closed-source desktop chat client for Discord and Slack, known for its native performance and low resource usage.
Pricing: $15 one-time purchase.
What they charge
Recent news
Hacker News, April 05 2026
WP Reset, March 24 2026
YouTube (LevelOneTechs), March 15 2026
YouTube, February 11 2026
Market signals
The market for Discord alternatives, especially native and open-source clients, appears to be a niche driven by users seeking better performance, privacy, and customization than the official Electron-based client. While Discord itself is a large and growing market with hundreds of millions of users, funding rounds specifically for third-party Discord clients are not publicly reported, suggesting this remains a community-driven, open-source effort rather than a venture-backed industry.
What frustrates people
Last summer we faced a conundrum at my company, Tiger Data, a Postgres cloud vendor whose main business is in timeseries data. We were trying to grow our business towards emerging AI-centric workloads and wanted to provide a state-of-the-art hybrid search stack in Postgres. We'd already built pgvectorscale in house with the goal of scaling semantic search beyond pgvector's main memory limitations. We just needed a scalable ranked keyword search solution too.The problem: core Postgres doesn't provide this; the leading Postgres BM25 extension, ParadeDB, is guarded behind AGPL; developing our own extension appeared daunting. We'd need a small team of sharp engineers and 6-12 months, I figured. And we'd probably still fall short of the performance of a mature system like Parade/Tantivy.Or would we? I'd be experimenting long enough with AI-boosted development at that point to realize that with the latest tools (Claude Code + Opus) and an experienced hand (I've been working in database systems internals for 25 years now), the old time estimates pretty much go out the window.I told our CTO I thought I could solo the project in one quarter. This raised some eyebrows.It did take a little more time than that (two quarters), and we got some real help from the community (amazing!) after open-sourcing the pre-release. But I'm thrilled/exhausted today to share that pg_textsearch v1.0 is freely available via open source (Postgres license), on Tiger Data cloud, and hopefully soon, a hyperscalar near you:https://github.com/timescale/pg_textsearchIn the blog post accompanying the release, I overview the architecture and present benchmark results using MS-MARCO. To my surprise, we were not only able to meet Parade/Tantivy's query performance, but exceed it substantially, measuring a 4.7x advantage on query throughput at scale:https://www.tigerdata.com/blog/pg-textsearch-bm25-fu
AI
Hi HN!I recently switched from a Fedora/GNOME laptop to a MacBook Air. My old setup served me well as a portable workstation, but I’ve started traveling more while working remotely and needed something with similar performance but better battery life. The main thing I missed was a simple taskbar that shows the windows in the current workspace instead of a Dock that mixes everything together.I built boringBar so I would not have to use the Dock. It shows only the windows in the current Space, lets you switch Spaces by scrolling on the bar, and adds a desktop switcher so you can jump directly to any Space. You can also hide the system Dock, pin apps, preview windows with thumbnails, and launch apps from a searchable menu (I keep Spotlight disabled because for some reason it uses a lot of system resources on my machine).I’ve been dogfooding it for a few months now, and it finally felt polished enough to share.It’s for people who like macOS but want window management to feel a bit more like GNOME, Windows, or a traditional taskbar. It’s also for people like me who wanted an easier transition to macOS, especially now that Windows feels increasingly user-hostile.I’d love feedback on the UX, bugs, and whether this solves the same Dock/Spaces pain for anyone else.P.S. It might also appeal to people who feel nostalgic for the GNOME 2 desktop of yore. I started my Linux journey with it, and boringBar brings back some of that feeling for me.
AI
### Describe the project you are working on Godot C# bindings ### Describe the problem or limitation you are having in your project For the past weeks, I've been discussing with several Unity users intending to move to Godot C# regarding dealing with the C# garbage collector. The most common complaint I hear from users is that, in Unity, allocations can trigger unexpected GC spikes into the game. In Godot, we target to make all of the high performance APIs (those that intended to be called every frame) not allocate any memory, so theoretically the GC should not be a problem. Additionally, Godot starting from 4.0, uses the Microsoft CoreCLR version of .net, which also supposedly has a better garbage collector than Unity. But in all, after several discussions with Unity users, neither is enough reassurance for them, and they would really feel safer if Godot exposed a zero allocation API. ### Describe the feature / enhancement and how it helps to overcome the problem or limitation The idea of this proposal is that Godot exposes zero allocation versions of many functions in the C# API, that users can use if they desire. Technically, this could be done from the binding generator itself, without breaking compatibility, and without doing any modification to Godot itself. ### Describe how your proposal will work, with code, pseudo-code, mock-ups, and/or diagrams **WARNING** I am not familiar with C#, so take this as pseudocode. Imagine you have two functions exposed as to C#: ```C# void MyClass.SetArray( Vector2[] array); Vector2[] MyClass.GetArray(); ``` This works and is pretty and intuitive. However, it has two problems: * GC is allocated on return * Memory is copied to Godot native formats every time there is a call. The idea is to add NoAlloc versions, which can be generated directly by the binder automatically when required: ```C# void MyClass.SetArrayNoAlloc( Godot.Collections.PackedVector2Array array); void MyCl
AI