Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage Client for Android

• pypush

  23 3,499 8.5 Python

  Cross-platform iMessage POC

I’m proud to share that we (Beeper) have built a real 3rd party iMessage client for Android. We did it by reverse engineering the iMessage protocol and encryption system.

Our new app, Beeper Mini, is available to download today (no waitlist): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.beeper.ima

Unlike every other attempt to build an iMessage app for Android (including our first gen app), Beeper Mini does not use a Mac server relay in the cloud. The app connects directly to Apple servers to send and receive end-to-end encrypted messages. Encryption keys never leave your device. No Apple ID is required. Beeper does not have access to your Apple account.

With Beeper Mini, your Android phone number is registered on iMessage. You show up as a ‘blue bubble’ when iPhone friends text you, and can join real iMessage group chats. All chat features like typing status, read receipts, full resolution images/video, emoji reactions, voice notes, editing/unsending, stickers etc are supported.

This is all unprecedented, so I imagine you may have a lot of questions. We’ve written a detailed technical blog post about how Beeper Mini works [1]. A team member has published an open source Python iMessage protocol PoC on Github [2]. You can try it yourself on any Mac/Windows/Linux computer and see how iMessage works. My cofounder and I are also here to answer questions below in the comments.

Our long term vision is to build a universal chat app [3]. Over the next few months, we will be adding support for SMS/RCS, WhatsApp, Signal and 12 other chat networks into Beeper Mini. At that point, we’ll drop the `Mini` postfix. We’re also rebuilding our Beeper Desktop and iOS apps to support our new ‘client-side bridge’ architecture that preserves full end-to-end encryption. We’re also renaming our first gen apps to ‘Beeper Cloud’ to more clearly differentiate them from Beeper Mini.

Side note: many people always ask ‘what do you think Apple is going to do about this?’ To be honest, I am shocked that everyone is so shocked by the sheer existence of a 3rd party iMessage client. The internet has always had 3rd party clients! It’s almost like people have forgotten that iChat (the app that iMessage grew out of) was itself a multi-protocol chat app! It supported AIM, Jabber and Google talk. Here’s a blast from the past [4]

[1] https://blog.beeper.com/p/how-beeper-mini-works

[2] https://github.com/JJTech0130/pypush

[3] https://blog.beeper.com/p/were-building-the-best-chat-app-on

[4] https://i.imgur.com/k6rmOgq.png

• albertsimlockapple

  1 4 3.6

  First World Albert Simlock Bug Release 2023

Does this look like the same file from the deleted repo? https://github.com/rdxunlock/albertsimlockapple/blob/main/AL...

I'd love to see an open source version of Beeper with no analytics. I'd be happy to host my own notification server.

• WorkOS

  workos.com sponsored

  The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

  

• sydent

  710 282 6.5 Python

  Sydent: Reference Matrix Identity Server

  

• albertsimlockapple

  1 0 3.6

  First World Albert Simlock Bug Release 2023 (by xxCabin)

• MiUnlock

  1 0 10.0

  MiUnlockCode iCloud Bypass Signal Open Source Code

• googlevoice

  1 10 0.7 Go
  

They started working on a bridge. I have endlessly begged them to make one.

https://github.com/beeper/googlevoice

If I knew Go I would roll up my shelves and work on this myself.

• self-host

  14 1,036 10.0

  Discontinued Learn how to self-host Beeper

  

Beeper already advertises the self-hosting route: https://github.com/beeper/self-host

• InfluxDB

  www.influxdata.com sponsored

  Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.

  

• whatsapp

  24 1,176 8.6 Go

  A Matrix-WhatsApp puppeting bridge

  

The best you can do now is run whatsapp apk on an emulator or spare device, then auth that with the matrix bridge, then you can avoid needing to use whatsapp clients on daily drivers. Works decently well: https://github.com/mautrix/whatsapp

• Jared

  3 427 0.0 Swift

  An easily extensible chat bot for iMessage written in Swift.

I’ve been using Jared [1] running on a Mac VM to send and receive iMessages from my locally hosted AI. If I could just use a python library that would make my life significantly easier

[1] https://github.com/ZekeSnider/Jared

• imessage-exporter

  44 2,437 9.1 Rust

  Export iMessage data + run iMessage Diagnostics

I wrote a tool for this: https://github.com/ReagentX/imessage-exporter

• LibreSignal

  49 258 0.0 C

  LibreSignal • The truly private and Google-Free messenger for Android.

  

>what does this mean?

Moxie (Signal's founder) has thrown fits in the past over the existence of third-party clients using their servers: https://github.com/libresignal/libresignal/issues/37#issueco...

• bluebubbles-app

  11 634 9.6 Dart

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

  

Also see BlueBubbles[1]. It could easily be integrated with pypush/rustpush.

[1] https://github.com/BlueBubblesApp/bluebubbles-app

• py-imei-generator

  1 41 10.0 Python

  A single python module to generate random IMEI numbers with specification of the first 8-12 digits

I believe you can bruteforce/generate IMEIs somewhat easily. https://github.com/bstein/py-imei-generator

• opendrop

  42 8,318 0.0 Python

  An open Apple AirDrop implementation written in Python

  

• SaaSHub

  www.saashub.com sponsored

  SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives

  

Suggest a related project