Endcord

endcord is a third-party feature rich Discord client, running entirely in terminal.
It is built with python and ncurses library, to deliver lightweight yet feature rich experience.
Discord token is required in order to run endcord! see Token.
Alternate theme, media with ASCII art

Features

• Extremely low CPU and and RAM usage (~30MB)
• Live chat, send message
• View images, gifs, videos in terminal with ASCII art (Ctrl+V)
• Integrated RPC (only Rich Presence)
• Desktop notifications
• Download/upload attachments (Ctrl+W/U)
• Select message and: reply (Ctrl+R), edit (Ctrl+E), delete (Ctrl+D), go to replied (Ctrl+G)
• Toggle reply ping (Ctrl+P)
• Channel tree (Server/DM/Group)
  • Correct channel order
  • Hidden channels
  • Show muted chanels as gray
  • Show unread channels as bold
  • Show channels with mention as red
  • Navigate tree (Ctrl+Up/Down)
  • Expand categories and servers, enter channel (Ctrl+Space)
  • DMs in separate drop-down
• Show reactions, replied message, forwarded message
• Show embeds, attachment types and links
• Spellchecking
• Open link in browser (Ctrl+O)
• Infinite chat scrolling
• Keep deleted messages (OFF by default)
• Highlight messages with mentions
• Show who is typing
• Send 'typing' (ON by default)
• Insertable newline in input line (Ctr+N)
• Copy message text to clipboard (Ctrl+H)
• Hide or mask blocked/ignored users
• No ghost pings (hopefully)
• Role colors in chat
• Date separtors in chat
• Partial markdown support (underline, bold, italic, spoiler)
• Theming
• Customizable status, title and prompt lines
• Customizable chat lines (message, newline, reaction, reply)
• Customizable colors, ASCII art
• Automatic recovery on network failure
• Remember last open channel and tree state
• Resizable (unstable)
• Show discord emoji as <emoji_name>
• Show mentions as @username, @role, @>channel_name
• Quit on Ctrl+C

Configuration

Settings and log file location:

• On linux: ~/.config/endcord/ or $XDG_DATA_HOME/endcord/
• On windows: %USERPROFILE%/AppData/Local/endcord/
• On mac: ~/Library/Application Support/endcord/

Run endcord -h or endcord --help to see possible command arguments.

Providing config

Custom config path can be provided with -c [PATH_TO_CONFIG] flag. If config is not found at that path, default will be written.
There can be missing entries in config, they will be filled with defaults.

Debug mode

Debug mode can be enabled with -d flag.
It will cause extra messages to be written to log file.
Endcord will periodically write to drive and log file will quickly grow in size.
Log is overwritten on each run.

Token

Token is used to access Discord through your account without logging-in.
It is required to to use endcord.
After obtaining token, you can either:

• Pass token to endcord as command argument: endcord -t [YOUR_TOKEN]
• Save token in config - recommended

Keybinding

Keybindings are configured in separate section in config.ini.
Key combinations are saved as integer codes, that can be generated by running endcord --keybinding.
Note that some codes can be different across systems.
Default "expand categories and servers" is rebound to Ctrl+A on windows.

See FAQ for more info on obtaining your Discord token.

Config options

Go to configuration.

Usage

Keybindings

Navigating messages - Arrow-Up/Down
Navigating channel tree - Ctrl+Up/Down
Insert newline - Ctrl+N
Scroll back to bottom - Ctrl+H
Expand selected categories and servers - Ctrl+Space
Enter selected channel - Ctrl+Space
Reply to selected message - Ctrl+R
Edit selected message - Ctrl+E
Delete selected message - Ctrl+D
Toggle reply ping when replying - Ctrl+P
Go to replied message - Ctrl+G
Copy message to clipboard - Ctrl+B
Open link in browser - Ctrl+O
Download attachment - Ctrl+W
View attached media (image, gif, video) - Ctrl+V
Upload attachments - Ctrl+U
Cancel all downloads/uploads - Ctrl+X
Cancel selected attachment - Ctrl+K
Reveal one spoiler in selected messages - Ctrl+T
Paste text - terminal paste, usually Ctrl+Shift+V
If UI ever gets messed up, redraw it - Ctrl+L
Cancel action, leave media viewer - Escape
Quit - Ctrl+C

Newline

Newline can be added to input line by pressing Ctrl+N.
To keep text in one line it is represented as ␤ only in input line.
When message is sent, it will be split in newlines properly.

Chat scrolling

When last message in chat buffer is selected, buffer will be extended with older messages.
If number of messages in buffer exceeds limit_chat_buffer value in config, chat will be trimmed on the opposite side.
If latest message is missing, then buffer can be extended with newer messages by selecting first message in buffer.

Downloading / Open in browser

Downloading and opening links have similar mechanism:
If there is one item, download will start immediately / open in browser.
If there are multiple items, it will prompt for a single number indicating what item.
Items can be:

• Links and attachments for 'open in browser'
• Only attachments for 'download'.
  Links are counted first. Items are counted from start to end of the message, in order.
  Downloads are parallel. Ctrl+X will cancel ALL downloads and attachments, with a confirmation prompt.

Uploading

Uploading is initiated by pressing Ctrl+U. Previously typed content will be cached.
Type path to file that should be uploaded and press enter. Cached content will be restored.
Wait until file is uploaded and then send the message. Mutliple files can be added this way.
Path can be absolute or relative, and has autocomplete on tab key.
If file size exceeds discord's limit it will not be added to the sent message.
Attachments can be navigated with Ctrl+Left/Right in extra line (above status line).
Ctrl+X will cancel ALL downloads and attachments, with a confirmation prompt.
Ctrl+K will cancel selected attachment (and stop upload) and remove it from attachments list.

RPC

For now RPC is only implemented for Linux, it is automatically disabled on other platforms.
And only supports Rich Presence over IPC, which means no process detection, subscriptions, join requests, lobby, etc.
Because of this, some apps may not connect, misbehave or even error. If that happen, disable RPC in config.
Usually RPC app must be started after RPC server (endcord).
More info about whats going on can be found in log, when endcord is in debug mode.

Theming

Custom theme path can be provided with -c [PATH_TO_THEME] flag or in config.ini. [theme] section in config.ini is default theme. If custom theme is provided eiter with argument or in [main] section, those values wil be used.
Same format and entries as in config.ini are used in custom themes (as separate file). If any value is missing, it will be loaded from config.ini, and if its missing there too, default value will be used.
If only file name is provided, without .ini extension, theme will be searched in Themes directory, in the same location where config is.

Media support

Very large number of image and video formats are supported thanks to pillow and PyAV.
All the visual media is converted to ASCII art that can be additionally configured in theme.
Audio is also played along with the video.
"endcord-lite", without media support, can be built by not specifying --lite flag to build script. Lite version is significantly smaller in size.

Installing

Linux

• From AUR:
  • yay -S endcord - full version with media support, larger executable
  • yay -S endcord-lite - lite version without media support
• Build, then copy built executable to system:
  sudo cp dist/endcord /usr/local/sbin/

Optional dependencies:

• xclip - Clipboard support on X11
• wl-clipboard - Clipboard support on Wayland
• aspell - Spellchecking

Windows

Install windows terminal or cmder, or any other modern terminal.
Build, standalone executable can be found in ./dist/endcord.exe.
Run exe from wt or cmder.
Optional dependency, for spellchecking: aspell. It is expected to be installed in C:\Program Files (x86)\. If it is not, please open an issue and provide the actual install path. Alongside with base aspell, dictionary must be installed, even en_US.
Emoji and Ctrl+key support depends on terminal.

macOS

Build, standalone executable can be found in ./dist/.
Optional dependency, for spellchecking: aspell. Can be installed with: brew aspell.
Never tested on macOS. Feedback is welcome.

Warning

Using third-party client is against Discord's Terms of Service and may cause your account to be banned!
Use endcord at your own risk!

Building

Linux

1. Clone this repository: git clone https://github.com/mzivic7/endcord.git
2. Install pipenv
3. cd endcord
4. Setup virtual environment: pipenv install
5. run build script
   • to build endcord-lite pipenv run python build.py --build
   • to build endcord-lite pipenv run python build.py --build --lite

Windows

1. Install Python 3.13 or later
2. Install pipenv
   • pip install pipenv
3. Clone this repository, unzip it
4. Open terminal, cd to unzipped folder
5. Setup virtual environment: pipenv install
6. run build script
   • to build endcord-lite pipenv run python build.py --prepare --build
   • to build endcord-lite pipenv run python build.py --prepare --build --lite

macOS

1. Install Python 3.13 or later
2. Install pipenv
   • pip install pipenv
3. Clone this repository, unzip it
4. Open terminal, cd to unzipped folder
5. Setup virtual environment: pipenv install
6. run build script
   • to build endcord-lite pipenv run python build.py --build
   • to build endcord-lite pipenv run python build.py --build --lite

FAQ

Obtaining your Discord token

1. Open Discord in browser.
2. Open developer tools (F12 or Ctrl+Shift+I on Chrome and Firefox).
3. Go to the Network tab then refresh the page.
4. In the 'Filter URLs' text box, search discord.com/api.
5. Click on any filtered entry. On the right side, switch to Header tab search for the authorization.
6. Copy value of Authorization: ... found under Request Headers (right click -> Copy Value)
7. This is your discord token. Do not share it!

To further decrease probability of getting banned

• MOST IMPORTANT: Do not use endcord to perform any out-of-ordinary actions (ie. self-bots). Discord has spam heuristic algorithm for catching self-bots, third party clients can sometimes trip it.
• Discord REST API is called each time client is started, when channel is changed and message is seen and sent. It would be best to not abuse these actions in order to reduce REST API calls.
• Do not leave endcord on busy channels running in background.
• Sending ack (when channel is marked as seen) is throttled by endcord to 5s (configurable).
• Disable rpc_external in config - it calls REST API for fetching external resources for Rich Presence.
• Typing status and Rich Presence are using WebSocket so disabling it will make no difference.

What if you get banned?

You can write to Discord TNS team: https://dis.gd/request.
If you did something particular with endcord that caused the ban, open an issue describing what that is. Maybe that can be prevented or other users can be warned.

Debug files

Anonymized data that might help in debugging is saved in Debug directory, at the same place where log file is.
All channel and server names, topics, descriptions are replaced. All channel and server IDs are added to random number and hashed, so they are irreversible changed, and will be different on each run.

Some role colors are wrong

This is an issue with cpython ncurses API. It is ignoring color prirs with ID larger than 255. This means only 255 color pairs can actually be used.
This will be updated in endcord when cpython issue is resolved. All custom color pairs are initialized first, so only role colors can pass this limit.
For each role with color, 2 pairs are initialized. Role colors are dynamically loaded, so this can happen only when guild has really much roles.

Planned features

Go to TODO.