I built an orbital graph as an alternative navigation for my open-source messenger
Most messengers display conversations as a static list. I wanted to try something different.
In ONYX v1.5-beta I added Account Graph — an alternative navigation mode where your chats, groups and categories become nodes in a dynamic orbital system centered around your account.
The idea came from Obsidian’s graph view. I adapted the concept for a messenger context.
Honestly, when I started building it I was pretty sure it would end up useless. Just a visual gimmick. But somewhere during development that changed. When you have a lot of chats across multiple categories, the graph gives you a better spatial sense of where everything is. You navigate by structure rather than scrolling through a flat list.
How it works:
- chats, groups and categories are displayed as connected orbiting nodes
- online users are highlighted via presence glow
- orbit speed is adjustable
- animations can be paused entirely
- graph position persists between sessions
The entire thing is optional and can be disabled at any time.
GitHub: https://github.com/wardcore-dev/onyx/releases/tag/v1.5-beta
Feedback is welcome!
I always love seeing “quirky” innovations
I say quirky as in “there’s already an established way of doing it that everyone is using, but I’m gonna build my own totally different thing”, similar to how Linus created Git because the established way was not good enough for his taste. Who knows, graph-based UIs for chats might be the next big thing !
Sadly, the network effect makes it hard to have people adopt a new messenger (I can’t even get relatives to move to Signal…). I wish Matrix wasn’t such a pain to make clients for. If your graph UI was able to show me all my conversations across all my matrix rooms and bridges, I’d be using it for sure