Adobe Flash has long been the number one streaming format on the web. However, there has been a concerted effort to move away from Flash as it becomes buggier and thus has become a security concern. Now you can watch people play video games on Twitch without killing your system.

Github user vinszent created a stand-alone application named GNOME Twitchto bring HTML5 to Linux desktops. (If you’re not familiar with Twitch, it is a video streaming platform owned by Amazon that focuses on video games.) While Twitch does have an HTML5 player available on their site, it is not the default.

GNOME Twitch allows you to watch your favorite Twitch stream without having to open the browser. The app lets you search streams by game title, watch streams, adjust the quality of the stream, and favorite channels. It can alert you to new content with the need to be logged in.

The latest release of GNOME Twitch (0.2.0) adds support for Twitch’s built-in chat feature. This program is still relatively new and still in development, so buyer beware.

vinszent promises that version 0.3 will be available soon “with loads of new features!” Some of the planned features include:

• Popout chat
• Twitch emotes in chat
• Undockable chat
• Channel Feeds
• Take screenshot of stream
• Record stream
• Add view count and time online to player
• Close chat when stream is closed
• Support for different player backends, including VLC and MPV

GNOME Twitch is licensed under the GPL v3. You can download distro packages for Arch, Fedora, and Ubuntu on the project’s Github page. It is also available in the Arch User Repository. You can view the project’s page on the GNOME wiki.

Overall, it looks like a great little app. Can’t wait to try it out.