ViceVerse-cz/Serein

What it solves

Serein is a lightweight, native alternative to the official Discord desktop client. It aims to eliminate the high resource overhead associated with Electron-based apps, providing a significantly faster experience with lower memory and CPU usage.

How it works

Built entirely in Rust using egui for the user interface and wgpu for hardware-accelerated rendering, Serein connects directly to Discord's public gateway and REST endpoints. It implements the full Discord wire protocol, including a native voice engine with Opus codecs and E2EE. For security, it uses the operating system's native credential stores (like macOS Keychain or Windows Credential Manager) to store session tokens rather than plaintext files.

Who it’s for

Users who want a high-performance Discord client that consumes fewer system resources, as well as those who prefer native applications over web-runtime based software.

Highlights

• Extreme Efficiency: Uses roughly 9x less RAM and 2.8x less CPU than the official client in typical streaming scenarios.
• Native Voice & Video: Supports 1-to-1 and group calls, screen sharing, and hardware-accelerated video decoding.
• Full Feature Set: Includes forum channels, active threads, server administration tools, and a built-in GIF/emoji picker.
• Secure Authentication: Uses a temporary native webview for official Discord login to securely hand off credentials.
• Extensibility: Features a Git-backed plugin engine and a community theme shop.
• Local Game Integration: Includes a Discord IPC socket server to detect and display local game activities (Rich Presence).