WeChat

Connecting over a billion people around the world, WeChat is a free messaging and calling app available on iOS, Android, Windows, and MacOS.

This article introduces methods of installing WeChat on Arch Linux.

Native Linux version

Wechat has released an official new version for Linux, which supports Mini Programs, Moments, VoIP and more. It is provided by wechat^AUR.

wechat^AUR also provides optional sandbox support, of which can be disabled by right clicking the WeChat icon in the taskbar (not system tray), and selecting Enable / Disable Sandbox. Extra path can be exposed to the sandbox by environment variable bwBindPar.

XMODIFIERS environment variable is required for this package, which currently supports Fcitx5, iBus and SCIM (untested). Consult the respective pages for their configuration.

There are unofficial Flatpak packages for Wechat: [1] and [2].

wechat-universal-bwrap and wechat-beta-bwrap are duplicate packages originally based on wechat-uos-qt^AUR^{[broken link: package not found]}. Users can copy ~/Documents/xwechat_files into ~/.local/share/WeChat_Data/Documents if automatic migration fails.

Virtual machine

You can install Windows system in virtual machines such as VMware or VirtualBox to use WeChat.

Wine

Note: At present, all the Mini Program function of Wine-based WeChat are not available, and pictures larger than a certain size cannot be sent. For details, please refer to here.

Installation

The compatibility layer Wine can be used to run WeChat within Linux.

In addition, it is also provided by deepin-wine-wechat^AUR (without patch), which is a Wine container configured for Arch. The WeChat version is the latest official version.

From archlinuxcn repository

If the WeChat shadow window is displayed on top of other windows during use, you can try to use wine-for-wechat in the archlinuxcn repository. This version of Wine uses a patch for WeChat shadow windows.

Besides, it is recommended to install, run, and configure WeChat using wine-wechat-setup. Note that WeChat installer needs to be downloaded manually.

Deepin-wine WeChat

Install the com.qq.weixin.deepin^AUR package, or com.qq.weixin.spark^AUR from Spark Store. There are other deepin wine related packages such as com.qq.weixin.work.deepin-x11^AUR for Weixin Work. See Deepin-wine for detail.

Run in a container

docker-wechat run WeChat wine application in a Docker container.

Configuration

HiDpi configuration

The font is very small on high dpi screen. To set wine dpi configuration:

Open winecfg. Take deepin-wine-wechat^AUR as an example, change WINEPREFIX and deepin-wine6-stable accordingly:
```
$ WINEPREFIX=~/.deepinwine/Deepin-WeChat/ deepin-wine6-stable winecfg
```
Click on the Graphics tab, change Screen resolution to your actual dpi.
Start Wechat, enable Adapt to system scale (设置-->通用设置-->适配系统缩放比例).

Electron version for UOS

wechat-uos^AUR^{[broken link: package not found]} provide the old electron app released for UOS.

Note: The original UOS package will only run in UOS professional. To mimic this environment, this package changes os-release and lsb-release through bubblewrap.