A chat application for chatting over a local network.

• Hosting servers and joining chats
• Saving chat logs to a file
• Switch to show timestamps next to new chat messages
• Dark/Light mode switch

Go to Chat -> Connect, select a server and type your username. Then click Connect.

Note: The list of available servers refreshes every couple of seconds. If you don't see a server there, but you are sure there is one running make sure that all requirements are met.

Go to Chat -> Host, select the server name and server message (a message that will be displayed to every user that connects to your chat), then click Host.

Note: If you would like to attend the chat as well, it is perfectly safe to open another instance of this application on the same computer. With IDE/Terminal it is rather easy, but you would like to stick to graphical interface then just make a copy of the .jar file with a slightly different name, and you should be able to open it twice.

Note: This only works for Windows and Linux machines. Mac users need to compile the application from source in order for it to work.

Download the JAR file from Releases page and double click on it to run the application.

You will need JDK and Maven for these steps!

Clone the repository and open the location of your local copy in your terminal, then run the following commands:

mvn clean package -DskipTests

java -jar target/local-chat-1.3-SNAPSHOT-jar-with-dependencies.jar

• JRE 17
• Network that exists in a private address space (https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1918):
  • 10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255
  • 172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255
  • 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255
• All attendants need to make sure that they have port 5005 open
• Supported operating system

Application works without issues on Windows and Linux operating systems, however on MacOS it has problems specific to JavaFX like no application icon being displayed in Dock or necessity to compile the application from source as MacOS security will not trust JavaFX libraries that originate from .jar file downloaded online.