Squiggle — LAN Messenger

Squiggle is a free, open-source peer-to-peer LAN instant messenger. There is no central server — peers discover each other via multicast and communicate directly on the local network.

Features

• Instant messaging over LAN
• File transfer
• Voice chat
• Screen capture & sharing
• Chat history
• Message translation
• Cross-subnet bridging

Technology Stack

• .NET 9 (targeting net9.0-windows)
• Avalonia UI — cross-platform UI framework (replacing legacy WPF)
• protobuf-net — wire protocol serialization
• NAudio — voice chat audio
• Entity Framework 6 + SQLite — chat history persistence

Build

Squiggle uses the dotnet CLI to build:

dotnet build Squiggle.sln

Run

dotnet run --project Squiggle.UI

Architecture

Squiggle.UI           (Avalonia app — windows, views, plugin loader)
    ↓
Squiggle.Client       (Facade — ChatClient exposes buddy list, login, chat events)
    ↓
Squiggle.Core         (Networking — presence discovery, chat transport, message serialization)
    ↓
Squiggle.Infrastructure  (Shared abstractions — async pipes, serialization helpers)
Squiggle.Utilities       (Cross-cutting helpers used by all layers)

Feature modules

Project	Purpose
Squiggle.FileTransfer	P2P file transfer
Squiggle.VoiceChat	Voice chat via NAudio + Speex
Squiggle.Screenshot	Screen capture & send
Squiggle.Translate	Message translation
Squiggle.History	Chat history persistence
Squiggle.Multicast	Multicast presence (standalone exe)
Squiggle.Bridge	Cross-subnet/WAN bridging (standalone exe)

Releases

Releases are automated via GitHub Actions. When a version tag is pushed, the CI builds self-contained single-file executables for all platforms and creates a GitHub Release with the artifacts.

To create a release:

git tag v4.0.0
git push --tags

Pre-built binaries are available for:

• Windows (x64)
• Linux (x64)
• macOS (x64 and ARM64)

Tags containing -beta, -rc, or -alpha are automatically marked as pre-releases.

License

See LICENSE for details.