Imageboarder

A fast, modern desktop viewer for chan-style imageboards (4chan, 8kun, 8chan.moe, Lainchan, and any other 4chan-API-compatible or LynxChan-based site you add), built with Tauri 2, React 19, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS v4. Runs natively on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Features

• Site switching — 4chan, 8kun, 8chan.moe and Lainchan presets out of the box, with real site favicons, plus a dialog to add any other 4chan-API-compatible or LynxChan-based imageboard by URL.
• Board browsing — live board discovery where the site supports it, with manual board-code entry as a fallback.
• Catalog & thread views — switch between a thumbnail grid, a denser compact grid, or a list layout; full-thread reading with greentext, quote links (click to jump), and backlinks.
• Replying — post directly to LynxChan-based sites (8kun, 8chan.moe) from inside the app; for sites that require a CAPTCHA (like 4chan), the app hands off to your browser to complete verification.
• Media preview — full-screen lightbox with zoom, swipe/drag navigation between a post's or thread's files, video playback, and a "play WEBMs muted by default" toggle.
• Downloads — save a single file, a post's files, or an entire thread's media to disk, with a live download-manager queue and folder reveal.
• Bookmarks — save threads for quick access later, persisted locally.
• NSFW-aware — thumbnails on 18+ sites and spoilered files are blurred until tapped, and 18+ sites can be hidden from the switcher entirely — both toggleable in settings.
• Theming — light, dark, or system theme, six accent color presets, and animated background themes (Aurora, Particles, Grid, or none) that carry through the custom titlebar too.
• First-time setup wizard — a guided onboarding flow to configure appearance and content preferences on first launch, replayable any time from Settings.

Requests to imageboard APIs are made from the Rust side (via tauri-plugin-http), so the app isn't limited by browser CORS restrictions the way a website would be.

Screenshots

Catalog	Thread

Media lightbox	Settings

Install

Pre-built binaries are published on the Releases page for each tagged version:

• Windows — download the .msi or .exe (NSIS) installer and run it.
• macOS — download the .dmg, open it, and drag Imageboarder into Applications. The app isn't notarized/signed, so the first launch requires right-click → Open (or allow it under System Settings → Privacy & Security).
• Linux — download whichever fits your distro: .deb (Debian/Ubuntu), .rpm (Fedora/openSUSE), or the .AppImage (works on most distros — make it executable with chmod +x and run it).

No releases have been published yet? Build from source using the instructions below.

Releases

Versioned builds and changelogs live under GitHub Releases. Each release includes installers for all three platforms, built via tauri build in CI (or locally per the instructions below).

Compile from source

Requirements (all platforms)

• Node.js 20+
• Rust (stable toolchain)
• The platform-specific Tauri prerequisites below (also documented at v2.tauri.app/start/prerequisites)

Clone the repo and install JS dependencies first, on every platform:

git clone https://github.com/niruxx/imageboarder.git
cd imageboarder
npm install

Windows

1. Install Microsoft Visual Studio C++ Build Tools (the "Desktop development with C++" workload).

2. Install the Rust toolchain (rustup-init.exe, default MSVC target).

3. WebView2 comes preinstalled on modern Windows 10/11; if missing, install the Evergreen Runtime.

4. Build:

   npm run tauri build

   This produces .msi and .exe (NSIS) installers under src-tauri/target/release/bundle/.

macOS

1. Install Xcode Command Line Tools:

   xcode-select --install

2. Install Rust via rustup.

3. Build:

   npm run tauri build

   This produces a .app bundle and a .dmg under src-tauri/target/release/bundle/. To target both Intel and Apple Silicon, add the other target once (rustup target add x86_64-apple-darwin or aarch64-apple-darwin) and build with npm run tauri build -- --target universal-apple-darwin.

Linux

1. Install the native dependencies for your distro. For Debian/Ubuntu:

   sudo apt update
   sudo apt install -y libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev build-essential curl wget file \
     libxdo-dev libssl-dev libayatana-appindicator3-dev librsvg2-dev

   For Fedora:

   sudo dnf install webkit2gtk4.1-devel openssl-devel curl wget file \
     libappindicator-gtk3-devel librsvg2-devel
   sudo dnf group install "C Development Tools and Libraries"

   For Arch:

   sudo pacman -S --needed webkit2gtk-4.1 base-devel curl wget file \
     openssl appmenu-gtk-module gtk3 libappindicator-gtk3 librsvg

2. Install Rust via rustup.

3. Build:

   npm run tauri build

   This produces .deb, .rpm, and .AppImage bundles under src-tauri/target/release/bundle/.

Development

npm install
npm run tauri dev

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• niruxxdaboi -