The previous run went green and produced an installer with no system-audio
capture in it — the exact silent failure this module exists to prevent.
Two causes. electron-rebuild takes -w as one comma-separated list, not a
repeated flag; passing it twice made argv.w an array and the CLI threw
'argv.w.split is not a function', which also broke uiohook-napi's rebuild that
had been working. And pnpm 10 refuses to run a dependency's build script unless
it is listed in onlyBuiltDependencies, so node-gyp never ran for it at all —
the log said 'Ignored build scripts' and nothing else complained.
Neither surfaced because desktop's postinstall ends in , which
exists so contributors without build tools can install. That is reasonable
locally and dangerous in CI, so the workflow now asserts a compiled .node
exists and fails loudly when it does not, instead of trusting an exit code that
was designed to lie.
First release built from the fork. electron-builder names artifacts and the
GitHub release from package.json rather than the git tag, so the two have to
agree or electron-updater compares mismatched versions and never offers the
update. v1.0.0 is already taken by upstream's tag in this history.
release.yml already builds and publishes desktop installers for every platform
on a v* tag, so no new workflow was needed — it needed adapting to the fork.
electron-builder published to upstream's repository, so releases (and with them
the electron-updater feed, which had no source at all) went nowhere useful.
More consequential: postinstall ran electron-rebuild against uiohook-napi only.
electron-native-screenshare would have been compiled for Node's ABI rather than
Electron's and failed to load at runtime — and since the loader degrades
quietly by design, the symptom would have been screen sharing with no sound and
no error, which is the exact bug this module exists to fix.
Documented in docs/build-desktop.md, including why the build has to run on
GitHub (Gitea Actions provides no hosted runners, and the module needs MSVC)
and why the Windows runner stays pinned to windows-2022.
Electron's audio: 'loopback' captures the whole output mix, this app's own
playback included — so everyone else's voices went back out inside the share
and each listener heard themselves. Not acoustic echo but a digital copy of
the output, which is why headphones never helped, and why shareAudio already
defaulted to off in the desktop app.
Electron offers no way to exclude our own audio: the docs allow only
'loopback' or 'loopbackWithMute', and the handler discards the renderer's
constraints (restrictOwnAudio never arrives). electron-native-screenshare does
it at the OS level — WASAPI process loopback on Windows — capturing only the
shared window when its pid resolves, and otherwise everything except us.
The module hands raw PCM to the main process, so it crosses IPC and is
scheduled onto a running cursor in Web Audio to become a MediaStreamTrack,
published as ScreenShareAudio. Loading is optional and failure degrades to a
silent share rather than blocking the app or the screen share.
The browser path is untouched: Chrome honours restrictOwnAudio and has no echo.
Verified by typecheck (web and Electron main) and the web suite. The audio path
itself cannot be exercised here — no Windows, no Electron, no audio device.
The @backspace/desktop postinstall runs `electron-rebuild -f -w uiohook-napi`,
which compiles a native module from source and needs a C++ toolchain
(make/g++/python3). On a bare host without those — a typical VPS a self-hoster
clones onto — that failure took the ENTIRE `pnpm install` down (exit 255), so the
server never installed either, even though uiohook-napi is desktop-only and
irrelevant to hosting.
Make the rebuild non-fatal: on failure it now prints a clear one-line warning and
continues. Machines with build tools (CI, desktop devs) are byte-identical — the
fallback never fires; only toolless boxes (which aren't building the desktop app
anyway) skip it. Verified on a bare x86 box: full `pnpm install` now exits 0 and
the server builds and boots from source. Docs note the build-tool requirement for
desktop work and point self-hosters at the Docker installer.
Strip the desktop package description to "Backspace" so Windows Task
Manager shows the bare product name instead of the long tagline.
Unify the web meta description and PWA manifest description on a single
positioning line that names Discord and TeamSpeak as the comparison
targets — improves link-preview copy and SEO surface.
build/icon.png and build/icon.icns are now committed pre-rendered
artefacts produced by scripts/gen-icons.mjs. The cp lines that seeded
gen-icns.sh and the gen-icns.sh invocation itself are no longer needed.
Preserves the macOS dock-icon override (cp into electron.icns) — that
is independent of how the icns is generated.
Installs uiohook-napi for OS-level non-consuming input hooks, creates
KeybindManager class that receives keybind configs from the renderer,
matches the OS-wide key/mouse event stream, and sends matched actions
back via IPC. Exposes syncKeybinds, onKeybindAction, onAccessibilityStatus,
onKeybindHookError, and checkAccessibility APIs through the preload bridge.
Screen sharing with audio captured the app's own voice playback, causing
users to hear themselves echoed back. Fixed via two layers:
- Add restrictOwnAudio constraint (Chrome 141+/Chromium 144) to exclude
the app's own audio from system audio capture
- Add shareAudio toggle so users can disable system audio entirely
- Remove outdated macOS audio block (now supported via ScreenCaptureKit)
- Upgrade Electron 33→40 (Chromium 130→144) so restrictOwnAudio works
natively in the desktop app
- Add NSAudioCaptureUsageDescription for macOS 14.2+ audio capture
- Add GTK 3 fallback for Linux GNOME compatibility (Electron 36+)
Use titleBarStyle: 'hidden' + titleBarOverlay on Win/Linux to remove the
ugly native title bar and menu bar while keeping OS-rendered min/max/close
buttons. Hidden Edit menu preserves keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+C/V/X/Z/A).
Title bar drag region and separator line rendered via web frontend, with
colors matching the Aether Drift design system.
Also adds electron-builder metadata (description, author, homepage,
artifactName) and multi-size icons for cross-platform builds.
Replace the Swift squircle hack with the correct Apple approach:
generate a proper .icns using sips + iconutil, then replace
electron.icns in the Electron bundle before launch. macOS applies
its native squircle mask + shadow from the .icns automatically.
macOS only applies the squircle mask to packaged .app bundles. For dev
mode, generate a pre-masked icon-dock.png via Swift/AppKit at launch
and set it with app.dock.setIcon(). Silently skipped on non-macOS.
Point prebuild script at the 1024x1024 master icon.png at project root.
electron-builder auto-generates .icns (macOS), .ico (Windows), and
multi-size PNGs (Linux) from build/icon.png during packaging.
- Dev/prod URL auto-detection (Vite 5173 in dev, server 3000 in prod)
- Typed IPC bridge via preload (notifications, badge, window controls, updates, deep links)
- Native OS notifications via NotificationController with window focus suppression
- Auto-update via electron-updater with UpdateToast UI
- Deep linking (backspace:// protocol) for macOS and Windows/Linux
- Window state persistence (position, size, maximize across restarts)
- Tray icon with graceful fallback when icon asset missing
- Suppress PWA service worker polling/reloads inside Electron
- Platform detection layer (isElectron, getElectronAPI)
- Root workspace scripts (dev:desktop, build:desktop)
- Document BACKSPACE_URL and BACKSPACE_UPDATE_URL env vars
- Add Backspace-design-prototype.html: finalized "Aether Drift" design
language with warm matte surfaces and subtle frosted glass accents
- Update CLAUDE.md with DESIGN SYSTEM section and remove Discord clone references
- Rename all Opencord references to Backspace across the full codebase
- Archive outdated design experiments and Discord-specific assets
- Add science-backed accessibility fallback (prefers-reduced-transparency)
devsyncwrld
Jannis Braun