Discord

Discord is an instant messaging and VoIP application with lots of functionality. It provides a web interface, though most users would prefer to use a client for interoperability with their system.

Installation

Note: This package is unfree and requires extra steps to install.

Official Clients

Nixpkgs provides all three of Discord's release channels, accessible as pkgs.discord, pkgs.discord-ptb, and pkgs.discord-canary respectively. Add any of the previous derivations to your package's configuration. For NixOS this will be in environment.systemPackages or users.users.<name>.packages.

# configuration.nix
{ config, lib, pkgs, ... }: {
  # This will install Discord PTB for all users of the system
  environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
    discord-ptb
  ];

  # This installs Discord PTB only for the user "alice"
  users.users.alice.packages = with pkgs; [
    discord-ptb
  ];
}

Unofficial Clients

Nixpkgs also provides a vast variety of community developed/modded Discord clients, which can usually serve as drop-in replacements for the official discord client with an extended set of features.

Warning: The usage of such client's goes against Discord's TOS, and can result in your account being permanently suspended from the platform!

Alternative packages

BetterDiscord

BetterDiscord is a client modification engine which allows you to use custom plugins, themes, and more. The easiest way to install this is using betterdiscordctl.

$ nix run nixpkgs#betterdiscordctl install

OpenAsar / Vencord

Discord has to be launched once without modifications, maybe every update, otherwise there will be a MODULE_NOT_FOUND error. See #208749

You can use Discord OpenAsar and/or Vencord by replacing pkgs.discord (or any other discord package) in your list of packages with the following override:

(pkgs.discord.override {
  # remove any overrides that you don't want
  withOpenASAR = true;
  withVencord = true;
})

Warning: Do not remove the parentheses, or it will not work.

Screensharing with audio on wayland

Vesktop

Screen sharing with audio is achievable using `pkgs.Vesktop`. To enable this feature, include it in the system packages as follows:

environment.systemPackages = [
    pkgs.vesktop
];

Then, execute it using `vesktop`.

Join the NixOS Discord

Follow this link to join the unofficial NixOS Discord: https://discord.com/invite/RbvHtGa

Troubleshooting

Discord crashes when a notification is received

Discord crashes if there is no notification-daemon

standalone notification daemons

• dunst — Lightweight and customizable notification daemon for x11

https://github.com/dunst-project/dunst || dunst

• mako — A lightweight Wayland notification daemon

https://github.com/emersion/mako/ || mako

Discord wants latest version

Discord refuses to start because they have released an update and it wants to download that instead.

To prevent Discord from checking for new versions, add the following to ~/.config/discord/settings.json:

{
    "SKIP_HOST_UPDATE": true
}

If the file already exists the braces aren't necessary.

Alternatively, you can install the updated version.

If the version has already been updated in a newer version of nixpkgs, installing it works something like this:

nixpkgs.overlays = [(self: super: { discord = super.discord.overrideAttrs (_: { src = builtins.fetchTarball <link-to-tarball>; });})];

An overlay to build discord manually from the URL to the latest tarball on [1], see [2]

If it was fixed in master, the other alternatives are:

nix-env -f https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/release-20.09.tar.gz -iA discord

or with nix-shell:

NIX_PATH=nixpkgs=https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/release-20.09.tar.gz nix-shell -p discord --run Discord

Opening Links with Firefox

If you use Discord and it silently fails to open links in Firefox, you possibly have encountered issue #78961. This is caused by a version mismatch between the NSS libraries used by Discord and Firefox. Luckily, a relatively easy workaround is available:

First, find out which NSS version Firefox is currently using with

$ nix path-info $(which firefox) -r | grep nss-

This should print a few store paths, focus on their ends, which should look like nss-x.xx. We're interested in the one with the newest version. Next, create a new file called discord_patched.nix and paste the following code into it:

with import <nixpkgs> {};

pkgs.discord.override {
    nss = pkgs.nss_3_49_2;
}

Now replace nss_3_49_2 with the previously looked up version's "attribute name", which you can look up here. Finally, build and install this patched package with

$ export NIXPKGS_ALLOW_UNFREE=1; nix-env -i $(nix-build discord_patched.nix) --arg config '{ allowUnfree = true; }'

Log in again and you should be able to open links properly.

Krisp noise suppression

The Krisp noise suppression option will not work on NixOS because the Discord binary is patched before installation, and there is a DRM-style integrity check in the Krisp binary which prevents Krisp from working if the Discord binary is modified. See https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/195512 for details.

Text-to-Speech

TTS is disabled by default; you may enable it via an override:

(pkgs.discord.override { withTTS = true; })

Links

default.nix for discord