TalkBank

Chatter

Chatter CLI (Rust) — Recommended

Chatter CLI validates and transforms CHAT transcripts from the command line. No source checkout is required.

Latest binaries index: /downloads/chatter/latest/
Checksums: SHA256SUMS

• macOS (Apple Silicon)

Preview availability note: Rust CLI downloads are currently published for macOS first as a temporary stopgap. Linux and Windows artifacts will be added later.

macOS one-command install (preview):

curl -fsSL https://talkbank.org/downloads/chatter/install.sh | sh

The installer prompts for install location (with a sensible default), asks before overwrite if an existing chatter is found, and asks before quarantine removal.

Quick start:
chatter validate /path/to/corpus

Common commands:

• chatter --help (list all commands)
• chatter validate myfile.cha (validate a single CHAT file)
• chatter validate /path/to/folder (validate all CHAT files under a directory)

---

Legacy Java Chatter — Deprecated (slated for eventual removal)

The Java-based Chatter path is still available for compatibility, but it is now deprecated and planned for eventual removal.

Chatter is a cross-platform application that performs strict validation of CHAT transcripts and also can convert CHAT to XML conforming to our XML schema (documentation). It is written in pure Java except for a system-dependent portion that calls the CLAN editor.

macOS app disk image

On macOS, it is most convenient to download the macOS app disk image and open it and drag the Chatter app to the Applications folder replacing the old version of the app. This method does not require a separate Java installation (of below).

Generic prerequisites (if not using macOS app)

Running the Chatter jar file requires that at least Java 25 LTS be installed on your computer. Double check that you have the right version by typing

java -version

in the terminal window. The free Temurin build of Java is recommended, if you don't already have Java installed.

On macOS using Homebrew

If you already have Homebrew installed, the easiest way to install temurin is to use Homebrew with

brew install --cask temurin

Download

This Platform-independent JAR is suitable for Windows, Linux, and all other platforms that support Java.

Important note: the "send to CLAN" functionality of Chatter is currently not available on Unix, Windows, or on macOS Mojave (earlier versions of macOS are supported, as is Catalina when running CLANc). Chatter is currently not available as a Mac OS X app. This may change in the future.

Usage

In GUI mode, Chatter operates by taking a folder and processing all the CHAT files inside the folder, recursively through any subfolders. (The Macintosh application allows drag and drop of a folder to the Chatter application icon.)

The folder, call it chatfolder, is transformed to a parallel folder of XML files, chatfolder-xml.

If there are any CHAT validation errors, each one is listed in the GUI window. Double-clicking on an error line will launch CLAN (in the case of Macintosh and Windows) to load the CHAT file and highlight the line at which the error was detected.

A file 00errors.cex will also be left in any subfolders in which errors were detected.

The Redo button allows a convenient validate-edit cycle.

Command Line Version

For this version, there is no need to unpack chatter.jar, since it is processed directly by java. It processes the Java class org.talkbank.chatter.App. The usage for this command is:

java -cp path/to/chatter.jar org.talkbank.chatter.App [options] [file or dir]

and the options are:

• -inputFormat [xml|cha|trn]
• -outputFormat [xml|cha]
• -output (to output a file in file mode)
• -tree (to operate on an entire directory tree; the default is to operate on a single file argument)
• -outputDir d (to output a directory in tree mode)
• -noValidate (for debugging only: to turn off XML validation)
• -allowAnyMediaName (for debugging only: to turn off media name matching transcript name)

This works most simply by putting chatter.jar and your input files or folder into the current working directory. In that case, if you want to convert a folder of *.cha files called myfiles to *.xml, the command would be:

java -cp chatter.jar org.talkbank.chatter.App -inputFormat cha -outputFormat xml -tree myfiles -outputDir myoutput

Current legacy Java version

The current legacy Java version is 3.2.4 of September 30, 2025.

The change log.