Signal-Desktop VS signal-cli

Compare Signal-Desktop vs signal-cli and see what are their differences.

Signal-Desktop

A private messenger for Windows, macOS, and Linux. (by signalapp)

signal-cli

signal-cli provides an unofficial commandline, JSON-RPC and dbus interface for the Signal messenger. (by AsamK)
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Signal-Desktop signal-cli
326 64
15,366 3,590
0.6% 1.5%
9.9 9.1
12 days ago 8 days ago
TypeScript Java
GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 GNU General Public License v3.0 only
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

Signal-Desktop

Posts with mentions or reviews of Signal-Desktop. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-06-20.

signal-cli

Posts with mentions or reviews of signal-cli. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-05-05.
  • Technical analysis of TM SGNL, the unofficial Signal app Trump officials use
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 5 May 2025
    While that's true even in the general case - through reverse engineering of binaries, it's especially true in the case of Signal because it's open source.

    There are libraries for interacting with Signal services (one from Signal themselves), here is a CLI tool that uses the lightly patched official library: <https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli>

  • How Beeper Mini Works
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 5 Dec 2023
    Not official but this works darn well: https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli
  • Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?
    56 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 2 Dec 2023
  • Privacy is Priceless, but Signal is Expensive
    7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 16 Nov 2023
    If you want one for just personal use; this works well: https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli

    Just sign up with a Twilio number (using voice call) and you can make your own bot.

  • What is your go to notification service?
    2 projects | /r/selfhosted | 26 Mar 2023
    Here is my docker compose, maybe it is helpful: signal: #registerung tutorial # signal-cli --username +12345678 register --voice --captcha censored # https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/wiki/Registration-with-captcha # https://signalcaptchas.org/registration/generate.html IN CHROME # signal-cli -u +12345678 verify 123456 # signal-cli -u +1234567 send -m "This is a message" +12345678 #curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"message": "bliblob", "number": "+41824174983", "recipients": ["+21412430"]}' 'http://signal:8080/v2/send' #external testing image: bbernhard/signal-cli-rest-api:latest container_name: signal restart: unless-stopped hostname: signal networks: - monitoring volumes: - /docker/prometheus/signal/client:/root/.local/share/signal-cli - /docker/prometheus/signal/client:/home/.local/share/signal-cli labels: - com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=true environment: - USE_NATIVE=0 signalweb: # curl -X POST localhost:9100/api/v2/alertmanager -d '{"alerts": [{"status": "firing","labels": {"alertname": "test"},"annotations": {"message": "Test alert."}}]}' image: registry.gitlab.com/schlauerlauer/alertmanager-webhook-signal:latest container_name: signalweb restart: unless-stopped hostname: signalweb networks: - monitoring volumes: - /docker/prometheus/signal/web/config.yml:/root/config.yaml labels: - com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=true
  • Is it possible to create Signal chat bot?
    2 projects | /r/signal | 12 Jan 2023
  • VOIP software/app for Apple devices with calls &amp; sms?
    2 projects | /r/VOIP | 3 Jan 2023
    Yes, using the signal-cli program. It has a built in JSON RPC API that can be used to develop application integrations
  • Signal-CLI and Desktop (no phone)
    1 project | /r/signal | 5 Nov 2022
    Last commit was 2 days ago so it should still work: https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli
  • Read Android notifications and send corresponding mqtt messages.
    2 projects | /r/MQTT | 29 Oct 2022
    Sorry to hear. Then the cheap backup may be a Signal CLI forwarded over to mqtt CLI
  • Created a Telegram bot to remotely control my windows PC
    3 projects | /r/Python | 3 Oct 2022
    build, install and configure/register signal-cli. The code snippet below assumes you are running it in multi-account mode, but I'll leave a comment where it matters

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Signal-Desktop and signal-cli you can also consider the following projects:

axolotl - A Signal compatible cross plattform client written in Go, Rust and Vuejs

apprise - Apprise - Push Notifications that work with just about every platform!

session-desktop - Session Desktop - Onion routing based messenger [DEPRECATED SEE README]

signal-cli-rest-api - Dockerized Signal Messenger REST API

libsignal - Home to the Signal Protocol as well as other cryptographic primitives which make Signal possible.

signald

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