I need help to setup rocket.chat locallly

[Iyeroo]

Hello,I am Anisha Gaur a final year engineering student who wants to contribute to rocket.chat for gsoc 2026.I need help in setting up it locally.If anyone could help it will be appreciated

[kaungmyatshwe1397]

First you need to fork the repo and then clone it to run locally. Then you can run it on your local code editor and install dependencies and start run it. hope it will help your question.

[Pratheek555]

Please use the below channel for more support to setup:

https://open.rocket.chat/channel/opensource2026

[sofia696969]

Hi Anisha, you need to clone the repo first
git clone https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat.Electron.git
then 'cd Rocket.Chat.Electron'
Make sure your dependencies are installed (yarn and Node.js) do 'npm install --global yarn' if yarn isn’t installed then 'yarn'
Run the app locally by doing 'yarn start' , after the build completes the desktop app will launch. On first launch you’ll need your workspace URL to log in. If you run into issues like TOTP freezes or UI errors, you can check the logs (AppData/Roaming/Rocket.Chat (development) on Windows) or use adb logcat for Android. Once it’s running, you can start contributing ( you can find the modes of contributions in the documentation)

[jt13890]

If you need a simpler setup, you could also use the docker image, which won't require managing dependencies, but might make it harder to add your own custom modifications to Rocket.Chat