Chatto Goes Open Source with Free Self-Hosting
Original: Chatto is now Open Source
Why This Matters
Open-source, self-hostable chat tools are gaining traction as privacy-focused alternatives to dominant enterprise platforms.
Developer hmans announced that Chatto, a group and team chat application in development for about one year, is now officially open source and available for free self-hosting. It supports voice/video calls, end-to-end encryption, and runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Chatto, a self-hostable group chat application developed by hmans over the past year, has been released as open source at version 0.4. The app is designed as a lightweight alternative to enterprise chat tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Discord. It can be installed via Homebrew and runs as a single executable that also serves its own frontend, requiring minimal infrastructure resources. All personal and chat data is fully encrypted at rest using per-user keys, which are permanently deleted when a user removes their account. Each Chatto server hosts a single community with no cross-server federation or third-party analytics. Voice and video calls with screen sharing are built in and fully end-to-end encrypted. Binaries are available for Linux (x86_64 and ARM64), macOS, and Windows. A managed hosting service called Chatto Cloud is entering public beta, offering European-based infrastructure with automatic scaling, nightly backups, and zero-downtime upgrades, with no vendor lock-in. Version 1.0.0 is expected within 6–12 months, with version 0.5 focusing on content moderation and multi-server client improvements.