taehagen / bluebubbles-app

A cross-platform app ecosystem, bringing iMessage to Android, PC (Windows, Linux, & even macOS), and Web!

BlueBubbles Clients

BlueBubbles is an open-source and cross-platform ecosystem of apps aimed to bring iMessage to Android, Windows, Linux, and the Web! With BlueBubbles, you'll be able to send messages, media, and much more to your friends and family.

**Please note that BlueBubbles requires a Mac and an Apple ID to function! A macOS VM on Windows or Linux can suffice as well.

Key Features:

• Send & receive texts, media, and location
• View tapbacks, reactions, stickers, and read/delivered timestamps
• Create new chats
• View replies (requires MacOS 11+)
• Mute or archive conversations
• Robust theming engine
• Choose between an iOS or Android-style interface
• Lots of customizations and options to personalize your experience
• Full cross-platform support - message across Android, Linux, Windows, the Web, and even macOS!

Private API Features:

• See and send typing indicators
• Send tapbacks, read receipts, subject messages, messages with effects, and replies (replies require MacOS 11+)
• Mark chats read on the server Mac
• Rename group chats
• Add and remove participants from group chats

Private API Features are not enabled by default and require extra configurations. Learn how to set up Private API Features here

Screenshots:

Chat List	Message View	Private API Features

If you need help setting up the app, have any issues or feature requests, or just want to come hang out, feel free to join our Discord, linked below! We hope you enjoy using the app!

Useful links

• Our Website: here
• Discord: here!
  • We highly encourage users to join to get in direct communication with the developers and community
• GitHub: here
  • Please submit any issues with the app here so we can properly track them! Remember to search before opening a ticket :)
  • Contribution is always appreciated and needed! Feel free to download our source, make changes, and submit a pull request.

Getting Started

All Client builds can be found in here.

All Server builds can be found in here.

After downloading both, follow our tutorial here.

Contributing

Please check out our contribution guide here: Contribution Guide

bluebubbles-app's Issues

Voice Messages - Not being properly displayed

Voice Messages do not show like they are in blue bubbles

They currently look like this

When restoring settings using a blue bubbles local backup file it causes open bubbles to go crazy thinking it cannot connect to a server and eventually causes rereg to crash

When restoring settings using a blue bubbles local backup file it causes open bubbles to go crazy thinking it cannot connect to a server and eventually causes rereg to crash. It also causes the top part of the app to show a puling red thing akin to in blue bubbles when in blue bubbles it cannot connect to the server

Support reconfiguring number registration

Number registration is currently only configurable during initial setup

App crashes when using restore files

• Openbubbles will crash when a backup message file is used. The app will hang and then crash.
• messages appear to be properly restored
• not sure if this is intentional or not.

App doesn't sync old messages and doesn't receive new messages.

Finished setting up but my old chats do not sync and I'm not getting any new messages.

New update: starting to get iMessages too, is there a way to sync older msgs?

Update: I'm able to receive forwarded SMS msgs but no iMessages yet

iPad 8th Gen wifi issues

• OpenBubbles seems to not work at all with the iPad 8th gen
• iMessage doesnt send msgs / no phone number reg
  App gives no error messages unless I click reregister and then it gives me this error
  

Phone number deregistered after 20 min

My phone number was deregistered after 20 mins the logs said this. Everything seems fine with the validation data device the code is the same etc

WARN [rustpush::imessage::identity_manager] No public key for token retry false .
ERROR [rustpush::imessage::aps_client] No identity for payload! Do not retry IDS key missing for tel:+1 .
ERROR [rust_lib_bluebubbles::api::api] Do not retry IDS key missing for tel:+1 .
DEBUG [rustls::common_state] Sending warning alert CloseNotify .
DEBUG [rustls::client::hs] No cached session for DnsName("albert.apple.com") .

Send and Receive Sounds

Send and receive sounds don't seem to work. When I add send and receive sounds in Conversation Settings, they don't play when I send a message and glitch out a little when playing the preview of the sound.

Stuck trying to reg with apple and not reciving validation data

the app keeps going into a state where it no longer seems to be registered with imessage. Manuelly trying to rereg in the settings causes it to throw an exception PanicException(called 'Result::unwrap()' on an 'Err value: SendError {..})

trying to send messages resutls in the same exception. the validation relay seems to have the same code and be doing ok the logs just show it sent out validation data

Attachment mismatch

Not quite how to 100% reproduce this bug. But it seems to happen when there's a lot of attachments being sent. Not clear if the attachment was actually sent or if this is because the images got cached. Also redacted mode was turned on for the second image, the image is actually displayed but when I click on it I get the media page.

Handle REG-RESP responses split across multiple messages

Known issue when registering with Google Fi

Fixed in 1ec2f37

Will close when latest release passes review.

Not downloading/receiving images

When someone sends me an image through iMessage (group or 1-to-1 chat), I see the loading icon for an image saying "Downloading Image" with a progress bar. Once the progress bar finishes, it displays "Failed to Download! Tap to try again". The same problem repeats when I click try again. I haven't checked if this also occurs with videos yet.

A video with the issue: https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/5e0a4256-82e4-48d0-94a8-771fa166aef7

Support accounts with Advanced Data Protection enabled

I had apple advanced protection turned on and strangely enough open bubbles turned it off lmao. I think it would be great if openbubbles fully supported apple advanced protection. Beeper mini did at least when it was first working as well as beepers imessage bridge.

Unable to send messages but the number seems to be stable and registered

Using my friends iphone 6s validation data. The number seems to be sticking but I am getting no messages at all

"Start chats from" field resets to default randomly

Field will randomly reset to the default (usually email address) rather than storing the user's preferred handle (usually phone number) for new chats.

Will eventually store properly if set repeatedly.

Support alternative devices like iPad, iPod

OpenBubbles currently only allows phone number registration for iPhones, however, if only Macs are blacklisted from phone number registration then iPads and iPods should actually be usable as well.
Additionally, OpenBubbles might incorrectly set user agents or other details for iPads and iPods, this should be double checked.

OpenBubbles does not correctly calculate file sizes

OpenBubbles does not calculate file sizes correctly.

App does not clear attatchemnts when deleting chats.

App deletes chat from chat list and archive page but when checking app info it still shows the "deleted" attachments as part of app data

Give warning when iPhone validation data is used

Many people don't seem to understand that the validation data (provided by ValidationRelay or beepserv-rewrite) is only necessary when the phone number needs re-registered, so the iPhone may be taken offline during the periods where it is not necesary.

However, OpenBubbles does not currently expose this information to the user, so even if they did understand, they could not make sure that their iPhone is online when necessary.

Some sort of system that (optionally) notifies the user when validation data will soon be necessary, and allows them time to turn on their iPhone, would be optimal.

In the same vein, some sort of UI that allowed checking the current status of the iPhone, and changing the relay code to another relay would be ideal.

Releases Through GitHub/F-Droid Repo

For those of us that don't like using Google Play, it would be great if the app could also be released through GitHub releases or a custom F-Droid repo.

Large attachments crash the app / dont show file size limit

Files bigger than 1 GB(like 1.2GB) crash the app when attempting to send them.
They also do not show the 1gb file size limit message.

Only files a little bit over 1gb show the file size limit message.
This may be due to how OpenBubbles calculates file sizes.

Enhancements to redacted mode

• Make redacted mode apply to all personally identifying things in iMessage profile specially in the starts chat using section
• Change wording of alias, to say something like redacted phone number or redacted email instead of just alias
• Make redacted mode also apply to my Mac / my device section (side note maybe change it to say my device instead of my Mac in unredacted mode)

Change how renewal time is presented to the user

The way renew time (renewal time sounds better) is shown in the app is pretty ambiguous.
It doesn't differentiate between how registration is different on Mac vs iPhone.(as far as i understand it, it is, maybe im misunderstanding how this works)
It also does not mention how Apple can make the device re-register at anytime.
It can be shown in a more informative way.

Unable to restore backups containing attachments

Openbubbles only successfully restores msgs when attachments are cleared. If the backup has attachments it will fail.

Removing Notification Category

Remove the incoming FaceTime notification category, app does not support facetime

Set `rustpush` as Default Branch

Considering that the code for OpenBubbles is in the rustpush branch, it would be great if rustpush could be set as the default branch instead of master.

Redacted mode issue

If show chat name as placeholder is enabled, then this shows the group chat name in the placeholder in redacted mode