Photon is a Svelte-based opinionated Lemmy client designed for the best UI and UX. Every feature is carefully considered and placed.

• 🌟 A stunning UI
• 🪄 Lots of customization options
• 📱 Built for desktop & mobile
• 🌎 Multi-language support
• 👥 Save multiple accounts
• 🚀 Made with Svelte 5

Jump to:

• Self-hosting
• Public Instances

You selfhost a Photon frontend server for your Lemmy instance, or independently for any instance.

The images are at ghcr.io/xyphyn/photon. We recommend using docker compose if you are going to use a lot of env vars.

To run an unconfigured Photon instance on port 8080:

docker run -p 8080:3000 ghcr.io/xyphyn/photon:latest

Clone the repo:

git clone https://github.com/xyphyn/photon && cd photon

Then to build and run:

bun install
ADAPTER=bun bun run build

# run the built server
bun build/index.js

npm install
ADAPTER=node npm run build

node build/index.js

Photon lets you configure the default client settings and more.

If you're hosting Photon for a Lemmy instance, you' ll almost definitely want to set these:

• PUBLIC_INSTANCE_URL string: The domain which the browser will send API requests to.

  • Example: PUBLIC_INSTANCE_URL=fedi.phtn.app

• PUBLIC_SSR_ENABLED boolean: When enabled, will make page requests be rendered server side first, which allows search engine indexing, and basic non-js usage.

• PUBLIC_INTERNAL_INSTANCE string: Only relevant if PUBLIC_SSR_ENABLED=true. This is the domain that the server will make API requests to.

• PUBLIC_MIGRATE_COOKIE boolean: Useful if moving from lemmy-ui. This will automatically migrate the logins for the users, making them not have to login again.

• PUBLIC_THEME JSON: If you'd like, you can export a theme from Photon and paste it here, which will become the default theme for users.

Photon has extensive user configuration options, and you can set the defaults for them with the environment variables found at src/lib/settings.ts, by looking at the defaultSettings object.

• Q: I'm getting errors about header buffer size in NGINX!
• A. You can apply the fix in this comment. You can also try using the Node server instead of the Bun server (instructions above)

Want your instance added here? Make a GitHub issue or make a PR. (this is for general purpose Photon instances.) If your instance stays out of date for a while, it will be removed.

phtn.app is the official instance and will get updates instantly.

I've put my best effort into developing and maintaining this open source app. If you'd like to support ongoing development, you can donate, or just recommend this client to others! Buy me a Coffee