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Tether: iMessage, SMS, etc. on Linux

zackbartel.com

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Re: Tether: iMessage, SMS, etc. on Linux

#121
post #39
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could stop using iMessage and iCloud.

Green bubbles, WhatsApp, Signal, etc. are not an option for a lot of people. I don't get it either.

What is there to get? Some people just don’t want to use other services. Period.

Not sure why people having their own subjective views and preferences is such a hard concept to grasp.

Re: Tether: iMessage, SMS, etc. on Linux

#122

Wasn't there another iMessage clone for Linux/Android a few years back and they got a C&D from Apple? Or maybe Apple just blocked their service?

This is very different from Beeper or BlueBubbles.

Tether is "merely" talking to your iPhone over bluetooth and the local network. It does nothing if you don't already have an iPhone. Apple should have no more reason to come after this than it does a Garmin watch that can show your iMessages via bluetooth.

Re: Tether: iMessage, SMS, etc. on Linux

#124

I use whatsapp primarily, so no tethering needed, but SMS of course for one-time passwords and the like. I didn't want to open my phone for that. So I had a coding agent write an android background app for me that listens for SMS and forwards it to a discord server, and side loaded it. So now I get a discord notif on my laptop with the OTP.

WhatsApp has started hiding otps sent to linked devices

Re: Tether: iMessage, SMS, etc. on Linux

#126

I don't know. What's a feature not in KDE connect that the writer wanted and it didn't have? They could always submit a pr. Beeper exists you know.... I have a question. It's fine to build for your own self but is it okay to release something in public when the environment is a moving target and you are just a one-man team keeping it afloat? Wouldn't it be better to go behind established FOSS products and not reinven…

This is a very good point and I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. I considered contributing to KDE Connect but decided against it for many reasons:

1. This would be a major subsystem added to KDE Connect and I have no history with the project.

2. The KDE Connect roadmap explicitly lists iMessage / SMS support as "Won't Implement"

3. My project requires a browser extension and mail extension, I can't imagine I have much of a chance of getting a "KDE Connect" extension approved.

4. Time: it would have taken much longer to jump through all the (appropriate) hoops.

5. Choice. While I'm not a fan of Omarchy, I LOVE what it is doing. Having an alternative to the Big Two and embracing "custom" desktops is very appealing to me, and I think it is a good thing for Linux and FOSS.

6. I was going to do this no matter what, it worked better than I expected, I wanted everyone to have it.

Re: Tether: iMessage, SMS, etc. on Linux

#127
post #114
post #108

Sorry if this is obvious, but does it use the same thing OpenBubbles does? What's nice about that is that it just hooks directly into Apple's servers, so doesn't require a connection to your phone or anything.

This is a good question. No, OpenBubbles impersonates a Mac and talks to Apple's servers. Tether connects to the phone via Bluetooth and asks the iphone to send/receive messages. OpenBubbles's technique is not supported by Apple, while their Bluetooth version is. Besides messaging it doesn't do any of the other stuff Tether does (author, im biased).

Thank you! Yeah, this is a lot more features than openbubbles could ever do. Going to check it out for sure. Thanks for making it!

Re: Tether: iMessage, SMS, etc. on Linux

#128
post #2

> Personally, I think putting an interoperability protocol implementation behind a copyleft license is a little unfortunate! Huh, haven't thought of it. Just relicensed ancs4linux to MIT.

I love HN. Read an article that raises a reasonable point about a project’s license, and that project’s author shows up to announce they were convinced and changed the license accordingly. Repo was updated 5 minutes ago. It’s things like this that give me hope for the world.

I'm not a scab, so I won't use permissive licenses on my unpaid projects. People who want to use them at work can cry me a river.

Re: Tether: iMessage, SMS, etc. on Linux

#129

Dependencies: ...wayland-client... Nuts, I'm on xfce, and don't intend to switch over until it's necessary. Why is Wayland necessary for this?

We really need a WaylandX, don't we? It shouldn't be that hard to make, since Wayland is a very limited protocol... I can't think of an ideological reason that apps shouldn't require Wayland that wouldn't apply to anything else. Isn't it just as bad for an app to require X11 or to require Linux or to require Windows or to require Android? You are free to port it to X11 or any other platform.

It exists:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayback/wayback

Re: Tether: iMessage, SMS, etc. on Linux

#130
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love HN. Read an article that raises a reasonable point about a project’s license, and that project’s author shows up to announce they were convinced and changed the license accordingly. Repo was updated 5 minutes ago. It’s things like this that give me hope for the world.

I'm not a scab, so I won't use permissive licenses on my unpaid projects. People who want to use them at work can cry me a river.

Same. Started to adopt AGPLv3 for every new project. With AI sucking up all the CV-driven contributors, it’s time to take back open source as a joyful hobby for nerds that enjoy programming and sharing their creations with one another, instead of being corpo stans that do free support for shareholder driven enterprises.
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