Request: AppImage build

[dasinking]

Hello there,
thanks for creating this tool! I tested it out and I'm amazed at how well it works. I'm looking forward to it's continued development, applying date ranges or viewing the media gallery comes to mind. But I want to raise something else:

I'm using Arch Linux, so neither the .deb nor the .rpm build suits me natively. Would you consider providing an AppImage build? That would make it compatible with most Linux flavors. :)

For now I've used debtap and manually removed its dependency on the gtk package (with gtk4 still required) and that works great. Lowering the barrier to entry would still be preferred I think. :)

Thanks again for developing this!

[rodrigogs]

Thank you for the feedback, it's so great to notice that people like it!

I will install an Arch VM to test it and it will be available soon, I promise :)

For now you can use it on your browser with no drawbacks.

[rodrigogs]

@dasinking can you test it on your setup?

[dasinking]

It takes a long time to open up for me, around 60 seconds. But it does seem to work. :)

[rodrigogs]

Update on the slow startup

After more research, the ~60 second startup time you're experiencing is most likely not related to FUSE or the AppImage runtime itself. It's a well-known Electron + sandbox issue on Arch Linux and other distros.

The real cause: Electron sandbox on Linux

Electron apps use a sandboxing mechanism for security. On Linux, this requires either:

1. Unprivileged user namespaces to be enabled, or
2. The chrome-sandbox binary to have SUID permissions (owned by root with mode 4755)

When neither condition is met, Electron can hang or take a very long time to start while it waits for sandbox setup to fail/timeout.

Quick fix (try this first)

Run the AppImage with the --no-sandbox flag:

./WhatsApp\ Backup\ Reader-*.AppImage --no-sandbox

If that fixes the startup time, the issue is confirmed to be sandbox-related.

Permanent fix options

Option A: Enable unprivileged user namespaces (recommended for Arch)

sudo sysctl -w kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone=1
# To make it permanent:
echo 'kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone=1' | sudo tee /etc/sysctl.d/99-userns.conf

Option B: Create a wrapper script that passes --no-sandbox

exec /path/to/WhatsApp\ Backup\ Reader-*.AppImage --no-sandbox "$@"

Why this happens

See: electron/electron#17972

This is a long-standing issue with Electron on Linux. Recent kernel security hardening (especially in Arch and Ubuntu 24.04+) has made unprivileged user namespaces disabled by default, which breaks Electron's namespace sandbox fallback.

Let me know if --no-sandbox fixes the startup time, and I can consider baking that flag into the AppImage itself for a smoother experience on affected systems.

[dasinking]

The --no-sandbox flag does not make a difference. It works good enough for me and you fulfilled my feature request, so I will close this issue. The slow opening should be discussed in a different issue. :)