Caprine : Open-Source Facebook Messenger for Mac, Linux and Windows

If you are concerned about your privacy when having conversations with your friends over the Facebook messenger, then you can switch over to Caprine. It is a privacy conscious Facebook messenger app for Windows, Linux and Mac. It is a desktop application so it works nicely on your notebook computers when you do not want to use your smartphone. In fact, you can keep working on your computer and still receive notifications from the Facebook on your screen through this third-party Facebook messenger.

When you install it in your computer and launch it, you will find not much difference between this application and the official Facebook messenger. The difference is not really visible – what makes this application different is in the way it operates to protect your online privacy. Here are some of the steps it takes to protect your privacy – it blocks others to view when you are typing a message, it blocks other to see when you have read a message, it prevents link tracking by Facebook and more.

Caprine

Caprine comes in many different themes – light theme, dark theme and if you are using it on a Mac then you also get an extra vibrancy theme. The vibrancy theme basically uses your desktop wallpaper to create the translucent background for the Caprine window and thus creating a vibrancy effect.

As far as the basic functionality of the Caprine app is concerned, it offers the same opportunities as the original Facebook messenger. We can engage in conversations with all our friends, send them emojis, send images, snap your selfie using the webcam and then send it, upload files from your computer, or even call your friend. In addition the program can be used in a compact mode and when minimized, it keeps running in the background and displays notifications when someone tried to talks to you over Facebook.

You can download Caprine from https://github.com/sindresorhus/caprine/releases/latest.