The desktop app

The desktop app is Pyre.Chat in a window of its own. It is the same app you use in a browser, loaded from the same place, plus the four things a browser tab cannot give you: a chat column that stays on top of your game, notifications from Windows itself, a tray icon that keeps chat running with the window closed, and a copy of your chat history on your own disk.

Because the chat itself still comes from the web app, a change we ship to pyre.chat is there the next time you open the desktop app. You are not waiting on a client update to get a fix.

Get it

1. Open Settings and find the Desktop app card.

2. Choose Download for Windows. The link always resolves to the current version, so there is no version number to pick. Going straight to pyre.chat/download does the same thing.

3. Run the installer. Windows SmartScreen will warn you, because this build is not code signed yet. Choose More info, then Run anyway. Signing is coming; until it does, that warning is expected and is not a sign that something is wrong with the download.

4. Sign in. Sign-in opens in your normal browser and hands the session back to the app, so a password manager and any second factor work exactly as they already do. Connecting Twitch, YouTube or Kick opens in the browser the same way.

Windows only for now. There is no macOS build of Pyre.Chat: asking for one gets you an explicit “the Pyre.Chat desktop app is Windows-only right now” rather than a broken download. Pyre.Stream’s desktop app does ship for macOS, so do not take a Mac download from pyre.stream as this app arriving.

Dock mode

Dock mode is the reason to install the app. It turns the window into a narrow chat column, snapped to the side of a display and pinned above everything else, so you can read and moderate chat while a game has the rest of the screen.

There are three ways in, and they all drive the same state:

• The Dock mode checkbox in the tray menu.
• Toggle Dock Mode in the View menu (press Alt to reveal the menu bar).
• Ctrl + Shift + D, from anywhere in the app.

What it does when you turn it on:

• It snaps to the nearer edge of the display the window is already on, so the column appears on the side your eyes are already using. The first column is 400 pixels wide, and you can drag it narrower, down to 360.
• The two sizes are remembered separately. Your windowed size and your dock column are stored as two different shapes of the same window, so toggling dock off and back on does not destroy either one. Resize the column and that is the column you get next time.
• It comes back on next launch. Quit while docked and the app re-docks when you next open it.
• Maximizing exits dock mode. Maximizing an always on top window would cover the whole screen, so it is read as “give me the full window back”: the pin drops and you keep the maximized size.
• The docked window is still a normal window. It is resizable, it is in the taskbar, and Alt+Tab reaches it. Dock mode is a convenience, not a kiosk.

Your game has to be borderless or windowed

No always on top window can sit over a game running in exclusive fullscreen: that is a limit of how Windows hands the display to the game, not something Pyre can work around. Set the game to borderless windowed (most call it “fullscreen windowed”) and the dock column stays visible over it.

The tray, and what closing does

The app lives in the system tray. Right click the icon for:

• Show Pyre.Chat, which brings the window back.
• Dock mode, the checkbox described above.
• Start Pyre.Chat with Windows, which is on after you install. When it is on, signing in to Windows starts the app straight into the tray with no window, so chat and notifications are already running by the time you want them. Untick it if you would rather start the app yourself.
• Quit Pyre.Chat, which is the only thing that actually closes it.

Closing the window does not quit the app. It hides to the tray, chat keeps running, and notifications keep arriving. That is deliberate, and it is the single most surprising thing about the app, so it is worth saying plainly: the X button hides, the tray menu quits.

Moving around

Back and Forward are on Alt + Left and Alt + Right, and also in the View menu, so getting out of a settings page or back to a channel does not need the mouse. The View menu also has reload and the zoom controls.

Native notifications

Mention and keyword notifications come from Windows itself and land in the Action Center, grouped under Pyre.Chat, so they arrive while the window is hidden or behind a game.

Two things worth knowing. First, notifications are off by default, in the app as well as in a browser: turn them on under Desktop notifications in Settings. Second, the desktop app never asks for permission, because the app grants itself exactly that one capability and nothing else. In a browser you have to allow notifications for the site.

They fire only while the window is not the thing you are looking at, which is the point. Clicking one brings the app forward, out of the tray if that is where it was.

Your chat history, on your disk

The desktop app keeps a copy of chat history in a folder on your own machine, and keeps it indefinitely. The server keeps a rolling window, measured in days, and this is the long tail past it. It syncs shortly after launch, whenever you bring the window back to the front, and every fifteen minutes.

What it archives is the channels you are authorized to archive: your own channels with chat history switched on, plus channels you moderate or hold a grant on. The server decides that list every time, so the archive cannot quietly widen its own scope, and a channel whose access ends is marked as ended rather than being passed off as still live.

You read it from the viewer card. Open a viewer and the card’s chat history gets an extra Older (this device) section holding the messages that have already scrolled out of the server’s window. If the machine was off for longer than the retention window, the card says so and counts the gaps, rather than presenting an archive with holes in it as complete. See The viewer card.

If you also run the Pyre.Stream desktop app, both apps share one archive. They write to the same folder, keyed to your Pyre account, so you get one history rather than two partial ones, and only one of them syncs at a time. Their sign-ins stay separate: sharing the archive does not mean sharing a session.

Updates

The app checks for a new version a few seconds after it starts and every four hours after that, downloads it in the background, and offers to restart. Choose Later and it installs the next time you quit. If the window is hidden when an update is ready you get a notification instead of an invisible dialog, and clicking it brings the window up and asks properly.

The tray menu’s top line is the version actually running, which is the number to quote in a bug report. Windows’ own Installed Apps list can lag behind an auto-update.