About Saltshaker
Saltshaker is a platform for adding voice chat to third-party games and apps that don’t have it.
Building voice chat is expensive. Even “simple” voice involves authentication, matchmaking, connection logic, reliability, UI, moderation concerns, and ongoing maintenance. Most projects—especially indie and community tools—either skip voice entirely or tell users to coordinate elsewhere.
Saltshaker exists to make that unnecessary.
The core idea
Saltshaker separates voice chat into two parts:
- Context — Who is the user, and which “room” should they be in right now?
- Voice — Once users share a room, Saltshaker handles the call experience.
Games and third-party apps are best positioned to define context—because they already know what’s happening. Saltshaker focuses on the voice layer so the integrating app doesn’t have to.
Plugins are how integration happens
Saltshaker integrations are delivered as plugins. A plugin’s job is straightforward: observe the external app/game and determine when users should be in a shared call.
In practice, that usually means:
- Deriving a stable identity for the local user
- Deriving a shared “room” identifier from the external context (match, lobby, session, party, etc.)
- Signaling when users should connect and disconnect
This keeps Saltshaker general-purpose: the platform stays consistent, while integrations can be built and iterated independently.
Why this matters
Saltshaker is designed to help projects ship voice support without becoming voice experts. Instead of building a full voice stack, you can focus on what your app already does well and let Saltshaker provide a consistent voice experience.
Voice “just shows up” when it’s relevant—without manual coordination or switching tools mid-session.
Add voice without rebuilding the world. Write a plugin that supplies context; Saltshaker handles the rest.
Where it’s headed
The long-term goal is a small ecosystem of integrations maintained by the community: plugins for different games, tools, and workflows—each one focused and easy to review.
Saltshaker will continue to prioritize:
- Convenience — low friction for users, low ceremony for integrations
- Restraint — a small core with a clear scope
- Extensibility — integrations evolve without requiring core changes
Saltshaker is an independent project. If you’re interested in contributing an integration, the Developer Docs describe how to build and publish a plugin.