Voice Chat Alternative from Discord
I'm looking to avoid using Discord for voice calls... I've always had gripes with it over the years but I'm fed up lol.
I need a stable voice call app that is cross platform (needs to work on Windows/Android/iOS). That's it. No screen sharing necessary.
I do my best to use Signal for texts, but my mutuals only care for so much...
Mumble is the unsung original that Discord obscured
it's free libre open source
Mumble has great voice quality and if all you want is VoIP then yes, it's a great option.
Unfortunately it can't replace all the other things Discord does. Also it is too cumbersome to use for mass adoption, I think.
no wtf? it has chats and channels and mod permissions
Screen sharing/streaming too?
Personally that's okay with me cause I don't need much of the features.
And I plan to mainly do 1 on 1 calls with a single friend (cause I don't think moving roughly 5-8 people will work), so not worried too much about server features
I saw that they had unofficial builds for their mobile clients (with iOS being unmaintained since 2017) and the android one being an F-Droid repo. Have you had experiences with either?
i've used the android one a bit
idk iOS shoots customers in the foot
Signal can do voice/video calls fine? I use it all the time when gaming with friends
This was my original proposal, but my friend is worried about messing up their Signal acc that could render it useless (they've seen me brick my laptop while installing Linux Mint...)
(They use signal on a phone, but want to use their android tablet and worried about messing up the linking device part)
molly (a signal fork) allows linking phones and tablets as secondary devices
I use Molly as my main app for Signal!! (I don't use GMS), but considering it's the most "tech noob friendly" option I've seen, I might get my friend to do that for their Android tablet
The Android tablet makes it a deal-breaker. You cannot use a Signal account from multiple Android or iOS devices without using a 3rd-party client like Molly.
Fluxer is an exciting alternative to discord. But can it manage the current momentum and overwhelming traffic ? That will be even more exciting. https://fluxer.app/
SonoBus:
https://sonobus.net/
It’s dead simple, free, P2P, and designed for remote music collaboration, so much lower latency than Discord. Even compression is optional and configurable, and it includes built in, tweakable filtering and gain settings.
And it works on everything. Android, iOS, desktop, all without any login. There’s a public server to start the initial connection (after which it’s purely P2P), but that’s self hostable if you wish.
It is a crime it’s so obscure. It’s basically perfect voice calling (and only voice calling), as long as everyone’s internet isn’t truly awful.
Looks cool and usable for the purpose, but the UI is very much geared towards collaborative music production with volume knobs for everyone etc.
Yep. But in practice it’s been intuitive for everyone.
Call apps usually do more than just calls though. They have chat groups and message logs, share media etc.
Yes, but sometimes direct P2P calls aren't possible across borders.
My friend lives in the UK while I'm based in Austral-Asia region, and I'm honestly not tech savvy enough for P2P or self hosting...
I also unfortunately don't have the best WiFi (MediaTek on a Lenovo Laptop in the great 2026...)
There's nothing to it, you literally just download an app, text your friend the server name and it connects. And if you have enough bandwidth for Discord or Lemmy, this will work too.
The big caveat is if your internet is bad enough to drop packets or randomly drop out a ton, it's going to cut your audio off. Discord would work really poorly too, but it would more aggressively auto-reconnect and buffer.
The best I found is Miro talk. Which is P2P and working in browser.
Have a look at Snikket. https://neilzone.co.uk/2023/08/a-month-using-xmpp-using-snikket-for-every-call-and-chat For iOS Siskin works fine for calls afair. https://siskin.im/
Does Snikket + XMPP require set up on my end? I'm not the most technical person so I'm worried I'll over-complicate things for myself...
Nope. It's already setup.
If you self host it, yes. But Snikket the company will host the server for you for a fee if you'd prefer to just sign up online and download an app from an app store.
Maybe Stoat/Revolt is for you. Stoat has - in my opinion - the same look and feel as discord.
It is OpenSource, selfhostable and it comes with most features discord has - excluding nitro.
There is an Android, Linux and Windows APP.
Stoat feels like it was a university project, and runs like one too.
I took a look at Stoat, but they don't have a mobile client ready unfortunately(T_T)
Thank you for the suggestiom though
No Problem :)
I think there is an APP for all major Plattforms (Desktop and Mobile):
https://stoat.chat/download
iOS and Android are listed.
Or what do you mean with mobile client?
My problem with the app rn is you can't do any moderation and there are no notifications.
When I think of a mobile client I think of a native app (mainly in app stores) or a github for android (bit of a foss user lol)
I can't speak for iOS but there is a Stoat native app in the Google Play Store
Yes they do?
I saw a lot of folk saying the mobile client was still maturing, so I wasn't 100% sure if that's enough for just voice chat
The mobile app is shockingly bad, and really they should tear it down and start again
https://fluxer.app/
Sharkord got released last week with a very strong foundation. I have tried it with a friend who uses Discord daily and he said "this is truly a pure clone of Discord" and I can't do more than agreeing with him.
Despite it's in alpha stage, I do really recommend it. Many pull requests with fast releases and the developer are very keen to make every pull request solid before releasing to the main branch.
I'm going to try this one out. Just found it on selfh.st, and it almost seems too good to be true. I don't care about massive online communities, I just want to talk with friends, and almost every other discord-like platform seems like they prefer the former.
Thanks for the praise!
EDIT: I tried it out, and realized I couldn't open ports on my stupid ISP router, so I had to rent a VPS to actually make it work. Took me a day, because I don't quite understand how it all works, but voice chat in v0.0.6 is what I can confirm sounds great!
Fluxer is an open source discord clone which will be self hostable and have federation between all the servers. It's currently in public beta
Fluxer looks great! But I can't find the documentation of how to self-host it?
Current readme on their github:
https://github.com/fluxerapp/fluxer
TeamSpeak is the original gangster