this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2025
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Stoat (formerly known as Revolt) is a selfhostable, FOSS replacement for discord [Group chats and voice channels you can join any time].

Cool new name, however not as easy to use in other languages.

Voice chat is stil not officialy implemented.

Self-hosting there. Apparently nothing to do for you if you had already hosted before the name change.

The Android app has unfortunately disappeared (not been updated) on F-droid.

Edit: added short description for clarification

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[–] Alfredolin@sopuli.xyz 28 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Ah! If you have never heard of it I can tell you: it's the foss, self-hostable equivalent of Discord. Except we are still waiting for the voice channels.

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 30 points 1 day ago (4 children)

If there's no voice channels, then why reinvent IRC?

[–] Jayjader@jlai.lu 1 points 4 hours ago

Syntax highlighting for code blocks is the reason I prefer discord over slack for collaborating and just chatting with friends who know how to code. I imagine some irc clients exist that so the same, but at least with discord I know my recipient is guaranteed to see what I see.

[–] ayyo@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Compared to some other alternatives, I think the thing it really has going for it is how simple it is. It's really a drop in replacement for discord, something I actually think maybe my friends that don't really care about Foss would consider switching to. They've told me they don't want to take the time to learn a new messaging software, I don't think they'd have to with this.

[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 11 points 1 day ago

There's a wide gap of stuff one can do between IRC and "chat with voice channels". For example, having a better protocol with better formatting options, a moderation API, better account management, other forms of multimedia (page embeds, images).

[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 0 points 1 day ago

is this a genuine question?

[–] papertowels@mander.xyz 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Wait when I tested revolt a few months ago they definitely had voice channels - was that a beta feature?

[–] Alfredolin@sopuli.xyz 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yes it needs extra steps if you are selfhosting and is not supported in the third party app clerotri for example. It seemed an hassle enough that I did not try it on my selfhosted instance.

[–] papertowels@mander.xyz 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Gotcha that does match my impression.

You're right though, there's value in it being a drop-in replacement for discord. Along those lines, I'm very excited for cinny, a matrix discord-like frontend. There's a PR for voice calls that I check every now and then, the moment that goes in I'll be trying to convince my friends to hop over.

[–] null@piefed.nullspace.lol 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Why not any of the other Matrix clients? I've got some friends on Element with some bridges and it's pretty much perfect.

[–] papertowels@mander.xyz 1 points 15 hours ago

The UI of the ones I've tried (schildichat, fluffy, element) felt very unintuitive to me. Spaces were really awkward because it was a different paradigm.

I'm hoping that the familiarity of cinny will help with wider adoption.