airmessage-server-legacy VS imessage

This server update isn't available through the primary update channels yet, but if you want to get your hands on it early, you can download it from GitHub releases: https://github.com/airmessage/airmessage-server/releases/

Run airmessage-server on a mac and connect with android or web client. — iMessage from anywhere.

Yes, AirMessage is actively updated. You can see the update history for the Android app here and the sever here.

Yes, you'll have to download the beta version of the server. You can get it here: https://github.com/airmessage/airmessage-server/releases/download/rel-3.2/server-v3.2.zip

However, I understand that some users want more control over their data. As such, I'm preparing to bring the same end-to-end encryption that AirMessage uses for direct connections to AirMessage Cloud. I hope to be launching this feature shortly, though for the time being, you may inspect its implementation on the connect-encrypt branch of the server, Android app, and web app, or compile and run it yourself!

As actions speak louder than words, I recommend you or anyone else interested take a look at the connect-encrypt branch across all of AirMessage's repositories (Android, web, server). These code changes causes allow users to protect all messaging data sent over AirMessage Cloud as well as FCM with AirMessage's end-to-end encryption, which will hopefully be available in builds later this month.

Great find! Hopefully this can be added to one of the GitHub pages. I wonder if it would be more relevant on the Android page or on the server page.

If you're wondering about nhtInformation, that's a value that depicts the type of message. For a full list of message types, see CommConst.java.

The nothing website claims:

> Nothing Chats is built on Sunbird's platform and all Chats messages are end-to-end encrypted, meaning neither we nor Sunbird can access the messages you're sending and receiving.

> Nothing is powered by Sunbird, and Sunbird's architecture provides a system to deliver a message from one user to another without ever storing it at any point in its journey. Messages are not stored on Sunbird's servers and are only live on your device – once a message is delivered, it can only be recovered locally from your personal device.

From: https://us.nothing.tech/pages/nothing-chats

The Verge claims:

> Marques Brownlee has also had a preview of Nothing Chats. He confirmed with Nothing that, similar to how other iMessage-to-Android bridge services have worked before, “...it’s literally signing in on some Mac Mini in a server farm somewhere, and that Mac Mini will then do all of the routing for you to make this happen.”

From: https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/14/23960516/nothing-chats-i...

It seems to me like if they are doing the typical thing of using a bridge like https://github.com/mautrix/imessage then that isn't really E2EE, the messages are being stored, and could be accessed by Sunbird. I don't really see how their claims could be true. Does anyone know? Am I missing something?

If you're willing to dive deep into self-hosting, the open source chat protocol Matrix.org has support for an in-development iMessage bridge. Once you get it to work, there's a Matrix.org client on KaiOS devices called Chooj (sideloading guide) made by Farooq that you can use to access the chat.

iMessage bridge

The disadvantage of not offering an API for iMessage is that there is no easy way to block clients. Apps like Bluebubbles have to work by being installed on an actual Mac and scraping messages from iMessage and Beeper uses a similar architecture[0]. Presumably they have a data centre full of actual macs (or VMs).

[0] https://github.com/mautrix/imessage

I have an old Mac Mini rotting on a shelf in my cupboard which is my bridge to the world of Apple shit. It primarily runs two bits of software: OpenHaystack, which I used to run my own object trackers over the Apple Find My network and Mautrix iMessage which I used to access iMessage via Matrix on my Android and Windows devices.

I've switched from iPhone to a de-googled Android device, and am generally trying to extract myself from google and apple ecosystem lock-in. The last piece for me is trying to find a reasonable bridge for iMessages - but the baseline requirement is to have a Mac PC running 24x7 to act as a bridge for matrix or airmessage. Here's my question: the hardware and software requirements for iMessages are pretty minimal. MacOS Big Sur implemented a few messaging bits like inline replies which I'd like to keep, so that's my OS baseline. Has anyone managed to strip down a hackintosh hardware installation to absolutely minimal proxmox hardware demands (e.g. ram/cores)? If so, got a recommendation on an efficient build process?

I know how crazy it is in America, but I think at leat the HN crowd wouldn't be participating in that madness.

If you are disparate enough, you can use a matrix bridge to get blue bubbles from anywhere

https://github.com/mautrix/imessage

Yes, tulir works for beeper. But I think they stopped doing that iPhone thing, and if you use iOS there are less features available: https://github.com/mautrix/imessage/blob/master/ROADMAP.md

I have an Android phone and if you're desperate you can buy an old Mac Mini and set up an iMessage bridge over Matrix (https://github.com/mautrix/imessage) or BlueBubbles to work around this. I do not recommend it though as it locks you into a facet of the Apple ecosystem.