Kourier

An unofficial native KDE desktop client for Google Messages (SMS/RCS), built with Rust, CXX-Qt, and KDE Kirigami. It interfaces with the Google Messages web client APIs via libgmessages-rs to provide a fast and seamless native messaging experience on Linux.

Features

• Native UI: Built with Qt6 and Kirigami for seamless integration with KDE Plasma and modern desktop environments.
• Branding: Modern and clean design with the custom Kourier identity.
• Real-time Sync: Features real-time background long-polling updates for incoming messages and conversation state.
• Media Viewer: Full-screen viewing of image attachments (supports "fit to window" and "actual-size" modes) with local caching.
• Message Management: Support for deleting messages and viewing detailed read receipts or status indicators (sending, sent, received, read).
• System Integration: Background daemon support (--background flag), providing system-tray persistence and native desktop notifications for incoming texts.

Requirements

Build Dependencies

• Rust (Cargo)
• CMake
• KDE Extra CMake Modules (extra-cmake-modules)
• Qt6 (qt6-base, qt6-declarative)
• KDE Kirigami (kirigami)

Optional Runtime Dependencies

• FFmpeg (ffmpeg): Required for generating and displaying video thumbnails.

Building & Installation

Arch Linux (Recommended)

This repository includes a PKGBUILD configured to build and package the application correctly. To build and install the native Arch package in-place:

makepkg -si

This will automatically compile the release build, set up the kourier.desktop launcher, and tie the installation to your package manager.

Manual CMake Installation

If you are on another distribution, you can install the application using standard CMake commands:

cmake -B build -S . -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build
sudo cmake --install build

Development (Cargo)

You can directly run the application using Cargo during development:

cargo run

Storage & Authentication

Auth data is stored securely by the underlying library via AuthDataStore::default_store() in your local user data directory. This handles and maintains the pairing credentials to your phone.

• Storage Path: ~/.local/share/GMMessages/auth_data.json (or your OS equivalent of dirs::data_dir()).