electron-repair

This program patches Signal-Desktop to:

• make the "Notes to Self" badge grayscale instead of blue so that it doesn't look like you have new messages
• remove the ~1 month build expiration timebomb that suddenly prevents you from sending any messages
• use font-face: Inter Variable 28pt (not actually this big) instead of font-face: Inter
• increase font-size and line-height slightly
• remove letter-spacing adjustments
• reduce font-weight slightly on bold things
• reduce the brightness of message text to rgb(216 216 216)

This repository is CC0-licensed and can be used as a template for customizing other Electron programs.

Usage

First, install git, nodejs (18 or 20), and pnpm.

git clone https://github.com/ludios/electron-repair
cd electron-repair
pnpm install --ignore-scripts --no-optional
node patch-signal-desktop.js PATH_TO_SIGNAL_DESKTOP

where PATH_TO_SIGNAL_DESKTOP is e.g. %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\signal-desktop.

This will back up resources/app.asar to resources/app.asar.orig (if it doesn't already exist) and then patch and overwrite resources/app.asar.

Annoyances not patched here that you can fix by other means

Media quality for images always resets to Standard

Change the setting in the Preferences:

File -> Preferences... -> Chats -> Sent media quality -> High

Smooth scrolling is slower than desired

Add --disable-smooth-scrolling to the arguments in your Signal shortcut.

DevTools are missing

Add --enable-dev-tools to the arguments in your Signal shortcut.

Lack of GPU acceleration on your ancient laptop

Add --ignore-gpu-blocklist to the arguments in your Signal shortcut.