Discord Sandboxed

Though a popular chatting platform, Discord has seen its fair share of complaints from users. Perhaps the most biting ones relate to the platform's data collection practices, which are fairly nebulous, making some users move away from it as a result.

As Discord itself is Electron-based, alternative solutions have propped up thanks to a few crafty developers. Taking advantage of Discord's Electron core, Discord Sandboxed is an alternative client for the popular chatting platform that isolates some of its data collection mechanisms, therefore granting users the opportunity to converse with their friends in a more private environment.

Save for the black top bar, there aren't really any changes to the platform's interface. Everything should be where it is in the official version, so the transition to this alternative solution should be straightforward for all. Keep in mind that using the screen share function is not possible with this client.

The main changes are under the hood, as they say. More specifically, the app tries to contain some of Discord's data collection practices, which should in theory grant a better experience for the privacy-focused users. While the developer doesn't guarantee that all of Discord's data collection is gone, you can see instances of it getting blocked via the Logs menu.

The black top bar houses two menus that are not present in the official version. There's a Logs menu, which displays the blocked APIs that would have sent over your telemetry data to the company. From the looks of it, the program is hard at work blocking those API calls from the moment you open Discord.

One problem with Discord's data collection is that the app often uses the Push to Talk function to reportedly listen to your mic, even when you're not pressing the respective key. To address this, the solution offers you the ability to freely toggle system-wide push to talk, as well as set a release delay.

As an alternative client for the popular chatting platform, Discord Sandboxed manages to provide a more private environment for users to communicate with one another. Though it's not certain that all Discord's data collection is taken care of, limiting it in any capacity is nevertheless welcomed.