Gobchat Log Browser

Browse and search your Final Fantasy XIV roleplay chat logs from Gobchat.

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version

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About

Gobchat is a chat overlay for Final Fantasy XIV that can log your conversations to plain-text files. Over time those chatlog_*.log files pile up — and finding that one scene from three months ago becomes a chore.

Gobchat Log Browser is a desktop app that turns those log files into a searchable, filterable archive:

• It auto-detects Gobchat's and GobchatEx's log folders (%APPDATA%\Gobchat\log, %APPDATA%\GobchatEx\log) or any folders you add yourself.
• Your log files are treated as strictly read-only — the app never modifies, moves, or rewrites them.
• All extras (tags, notes, settings, metadata cache) are stored separately in %APPDATA%\GobchatLogBrowser.

Screenshots

Log list & filters	Log viewer
Search	Settings

Captured with the AI-generated mock logs — no real player data.

Features

• Log overview — all logs at a glance with date, participants, message count, and duration.
• Roleplay highlighting — dialogue, emotes, and out-of-character text are color-coded; the marker characters are configurable and default to Gobchat's conventions.
• Raw & reassembled views — view a log in its original file order, or let the app stitch interrupted multi-part messages ((1/2), trailing >, ->, >>, +, …) back together, with each post's start and end time. Reassembly is a best-effort heuristic and happens purely in memory — files are never changed.
• Search everywhere — full-text search across all logs, plus find-in-log with match navigation (Enter / Shift+Enter) and match ticks on the scrollbar.
• Player & tag filter — filter the log list by participants and #tags (combined as AND); your own roleplay characters stay pinned to the top, and tag chips in the list are clickable.
• Highlighter — highlight lines that mention your character names.
• Tags & notes — tag logs and attach notes; stored as JSON sidecars, never inside the log files.
• Live updates — the log list refreshes automatically while Gobchat writes new logs.
• Hide empty logs — optionally hide logs with no detected participants from the overview.
• Fast startup — a persistent metadata index means even large log collections open quickly.
• Opt-in update check — get notified about new releases.
• First-run wizard, dark & light themes with customizable highlight colors, English & German UI.

Getting started

Platform support: Windows is the supported and tested platform. The code base is platform-agnostic and Linux/macOS builds should work, but they are currently untested.

Download the latest version from the releases page:

• Installer (recommended): Gobchat-Log-Browser-win-Setup.exe — installs per-user to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Gobchat-Log-Browser (no admin rights needed), creates Start Menu and desktop shortcuts, and installs the Microsoft Edge WebView2 runtime if it is missing. Once installed, the app updates itself in place (opt-in, from the Settings → About section). Uninstalling via Windows Settings → Apps keeps your tags, notes, and settings.
• Portable: Gobchat-Log-Browser-win-Portable.zip — unzip anywhere and run the exe directly (no auto-update).

SmartScreen warning: the binaries are not code-signed, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC" on first run. Click More info → Run anyway. This is expected for small open-source tools without a (paid) signing certificate.

Building from source (see below) works too, but is optional.

1. Run the application. On first launch a short setup wizard asks for your language, theme, and log folder.
2. If Gobchat is installed, its log folder is detected automatically — just confirm it.
3. Pick a log from the list and start reading. That's it.

Requirements: Windows 10/11 with the WebView2 runtime (preinstalled on Windows 11 and most up-to-date Windows 10 systems).

Building from source

Prerequisites:

• Go 1.24+
• Node.js (with npm)
• Wails CLI v2: go install github.com/wailsapp/wails/v2/cmd/wails@latest

Windows build note: set CGO_LDFLAGS=-lntdll before wails dev / wails build / go test — the velopack-go binding links Velopack's Rust libs, which reference ntdll.

# Development with hot reload
wails dev

# Production build → build/bin/gobchat-log-browser.exe
wails build

Running the tests:

go test ./...                      # backend
cd frontend && npm run build       # type-check + build the frontend

Architecture

The backend (Go) handles everything heavy: parsing the Gobchat log format, roleplay-span tokenization, search indexing, file watching, and metadata caching. The frontend (Vue 3 + TypeScript + Pinia) is a thin, virtualized UI on top, connected through Wails bindings.

Design decisions are recorded as ADRs in docs/adr/ — including why logs are read-only and why message reassembly is heuristic and display-only.

License

Licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

Gobchat Log Browser is a fan-made tool and is not affiliated with Square Enix or with the Gobchat project. Final Fantasy XIV is a registered trademark of Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd.