What is it?

Between.linux is a kind-of open source version of the proprietary relationship chatting app Between. It uses the official source code, which has been extracted from the original windows application.

The primary target is Linux, since there is no official app for that.
But it should also build and run on any other platform which is supported by Electron.

Changes

Only a few changes have been made to the original source code, to make things like closing, minimizing and changing opacity of the app window to match the original behaviour.

Disclaimer

I am not the original author of the Between app, neither do I claim ownership of the code in this repository. The copyright remains with the original author Between Us Co.,Ltd.

If the original author wants me to take down this repository, I will happily do so immediately.

Broken features

It is very usable and almost everything works, except some minor things:

• No read confirmation
  • All messages read in this app won't trigger the read confirmation on other devices
  • The little hearts next to the "unread" message remain even when new messages have been sent from this app
  • So your partner won't be able to tell whether you read their message or not
• No banner notification / Only audio notification
  • No banners will be displayed when messages come in while the app is in background/minimized
  • Only a audio notifications will be triggered
• Smiley picker doesn't show everything
  • The smiley picker doesn't show all the smileys there are
  • Though they are correclty shown in the chat
  • Only affects the small built-in stickers on the first page
  • Not the larger stickers

Installation

At the Release page you can find the latest pre-built Linux packages.

Supported package formats:

• RPM
• DEB

Building from source

Preparation

git clone https://github.com/wagnrd/Between.linux.git
cd Between.linux
npm install

Run without packaging

For testing or development purposes you can run the electron app without installing or building it with the following command:

npm start

Build all targets

This step will build all targets. If you don't want to build everything please refer to the Troubleshooting section below.

Dependencies

This step also includes building an rpm and snap package. For this you need the rpm package manager installed on your local machine:

sudo apt install rpm

Building

After that you should be able to build all targets with the following:

npm run make

Troubleshooting

This has only be tested on Ubuntu. If you have trouble building everything, remove unwanted targets from the electron-forge config inside of package.json.

The targets are configured in the makers property. The string behind the "@electron-forge/maker-<package-type>" in the name property states the built package. Just delete everything you don't want to build.

Versioning

With the versioning you can keep track of new app or compatibility releases.

The version number in this project is composed from the original version number the code is based on and a continuous version number denoting the compatibility changes I had to make to get things working.

Example:

1.0.8-1

• 1.0.8 is the current version of the original app
• -1 is the version of the compatibility changes

So everytime the first version number, before the "-" increases, you should consider updating your package.
If you are waiting for compatibility updates, the second number is the one you have to look out for.