Whisperfish
Whisperfish is an advanced but unofficial Signal client. Whisperfish should be in a usable state for many users, but is still considered beta quality software; make sure to always have the latest version! Also, check our Wiki and feel free to contribute to it! Currently, mimimum supported SailfishOS version is 3.4. We intend to keep compatibility with 3.3 for as long as humanly possible.
Do not ever contact the Signal developers about a Whisperfish issue. You will annoy them and make them dislike us. Contact us instead (see below).
What to expect
If you had a pre-existing, working 0.5 installation with default settings, migration should be a breeze. Notably not working:
- Creating groups, inviting new members, deleting members (planned for later)
- Message quotes (the UI element is there, but the implementation currently lacks)
- Many other UI features are just stubs at this point.
- Whisperfish as secondary device, if you register Whisperfish, your previous registration (Android/iOS) gets disabled.
SailfishOS platform version notes and known issues
The intention is to keep as many versions of SailfishOS supported for as long as possible. Some versions show bugs specific to that SailfishOS version. If it is not possible to upgrade to the version mentioned below, you can use the workarounds mentioned here.
Currently highest tested SailfishOS version: SailfishOS 4.2
SailfishOS 3.x series
Bugs present in the Sailfish 3.x series
In principle, Whisperfish works on SailfishOS 3.3, except for registration.
- Registration on SailfishOS 3.3. As a workaround, register on another device, and move over your data.
Installation on SailfishOS 3.x
Since the release of SailfishOS 4.3, there has been an ABI-incompatible change between 3.x and 4.x. Whisperfish is now built separately for 3.x and 4.x, and both packages are available in this repository. If Storeman cannot figure out the correct version for your 3.x installation, you can install Whisperfish via the commandline (after adding the repository):
zypper install harbour-whisperfish-0.6.0.beta.7-0.sf3.armv7hl
SailfishOS 4.x series
The Sailfish 4.x series introduced a few issues, and possibly new features; notably:
- Registration on SailfishOS 4.0.1.45 EA. The rendering of a reCAPTCHA does not work in any of the available webviews. This will be fixed in the next SailfishOS release. Meanwhile, use this patch which will be offered to you as an update after enabling this OpenRepos repository. Install the update and then register. Do not install it on any other version than SailfishOS 4.0, there's no need. If it still doesn't work, run zypper ref ; zypper dup -r openrepos-rubdos on the command line as root and accept the update of the three webview packages.
- Especially SailfishOS 4.2 required a major change in the event loop structure. Make sure you use Whisperfish 0.6.0-beta.6 or later.
Contribute: get in touch, report issues and translate!
If the app behaves strangely or slow (I have a strong dislike for slow software) to you, please get in touch on Matrix #whisperfish:rubdos.be or on Libera.Chat #whisperfish, file an issue, or send an email to whisperfish [at] rubdos [dot] be, or post on the SailfishOS Forum topic. If it works well already, alse let me know! That's good for morale.
Development and progress
Follow the progress of the rework in the 0.6 milestone on Gitlab. If you are interested in contributing, contact me on Gitlab. If you want to discuss development, join the discussion on Matrix #whisperfish:rubdos.be.
There are nightly builds (in form of RPM) available on Gitlab. Nighlies eat batteries for breakfast, break up with your girlfriend, and use magic to turn phones into bricks. If you want to use them, please come and chat on Matrix or IRC. Whenever there is a version that makes sense, and has a low probability of tearing apart the very fabric of the universe, it'll be here on Open Repos!
Donations
Thanks for the support, feel free to buy me a coffee! Liberapay allows for donations via PayPal or credit card. While I do appreciate the donations, please consider matching your donation towards Signal themselves. They need it more than I do, now more than ever! Also consider donating to Weblate, because they provide their translation hosting service to us and many other SailfishOS applications at no cost!
License note
The original Whisperfish 0.5.0, by Andrew, was released under GPLv3+. Since we are using the upstream code of Signal themselves, partly licensed under AGPLv3+, the whole of Whisperfish 0.6.0 falls under AGPLv3+.
Screenshots:
Category:
Application versions:
Changelog:
Whisperfish 1.0.0 (planned)
The milestone on GitLab for this release (th
Many big plans!
- The Big Refactoring, including cleanup of spaghetti, building with the official SDK, ...
- Registration as a secondary device, if you prefer running the official Android Signal app as main device.
Whisperfish 0.6.0 (planned)
The milestone on Gitlab for this release
Features
- Feature parity with, and modernized version of Whisperfish 0.5.
Whisperfish 0.6.0-beta.7
Edition "omg OpenSSL".
Changes
- Device linking scheme sgnl:// is now supported, allows to link secondary devices again.
- Restructured storage crypto code (thanks to Mutluler!)
- Begin of the Basque translation (thanks to Sergio Varela)
- Fix notification icon and adds multiple resolution icons (thanks to Matti Viljanen/direc85)
- Start using the SailfishOS SDK instead of the hacked-together RubdosSDK. This paves the path to supporting multiple other operating systems and possibly a Linux desktop client. Proof of concept Ubuntu-Touch version exists (thanks Tim and the Axolotl hackers!)
- Separate builds for SailfishOS 3-series and SailfishOS 4-series available on OpenRepos, which solves the incompatibility with SailfishOS 4.3's lack of OpenSSL 1.0. Storeman/zypper should automatically select the correct version for your operating system.
Whisperfish 0.6.0-beta.6
Edition "invert the event loop". Write-up here: https://github.com/woboq/qmetaobject-rs/issues/102#issuecomment-919798690
Features
- GUI performance improvement (thanks to the event loop inversion)
- Load time improvement through more database indexing (thanks to Matti Viljanen)
- Add "refresh group" option for stubborn groups.
Fixes
- SailfishOS 4.2 compatibility (thanks to the event loop inversion)
- Order messages by date instead of by id (thanks to Matti Viljanen)
- Fix message and session deletion (thanks to Matti Viljanen
- Fix notifications on SailfishOS 3.x (thanks to Matti Viljanen)
Whisperfish 0.6.0-beta.5
Fixes
- Reception of messages with attachments, but without accompanying text
- Show contact/payment/deletion/group call update messages as "unimplemented" instead of empty.
Whisperfish 0.6.0-beta.4
Features
- MyBackup compatibility, thanks to Nathan!
- Display group changes and message timer changes in chat.
Fixes
- Fix usage of configured attachment path
- Fix the many empty messages sent by Android and iOS clients for profile key pushes
Translations
- Add Lithuanian, by Gediminas Murauskas
- Updates to Greek, French, Turkish, Dutch, and Vlaams. Thanks to all contributors!
Whisperfish 0.6.0-beta.3
Emergency release for the HTTP-500 "nothing can be send" bug and the BadKeyType bug.
Fixes
- Identity key read errors
- Update local storage format quirks for future Signal versions
Whisperfish 0.6.0-beta.2 (yanked)
Emergency release for the HTTP-500 "nothing can be send" bug.
Features
- My Backup compatibility (thanks to Nthn).
- You need to reset all sessions manually after a reset, if they had been touched after taking the backup.
- Share to Whisperfish functionality (thanks to Gabriel Margiani)
- Enabling on SailfishOS 4.0 needs some additional work.
- Database VACUUM option in settings (thanks to Igor Makarov)
- Initial work to decouple Whisperfish from SailfishOS (thanks to Be)
- Migrated to libsignal-client.
Fixes
- The infamous "I can't send anything anymore" HTTP-500 issue
- Crash on certain session resets
Whisperfish 0.6.0-beta.1
The milestone on Gitlab for this release
Features
- GroupsV2 compatibility
- Notably, you can only be added to a group, invites are not yet implemented.
- Complete migration to UUID-based sessions.
- Device linking (Signal Desktop)
- Register without storage password, thanks to Gabriel Margiani!
- Slight cleanup of the registration page, thanks to ntninja!
- HUGE overhaul of the UI, thanks to Mirian Margiani! You won't recognise Whisperfish anymore. Pinky promise.
- Setup for all the new Signal features: quotes, multiple attachments, stickers/gifs, ...
- New video and image pages.
- Linking/saving contacts from the UI
- Emoji pack support, check our wiki for installation.
- Clean-up of the group view page, in part thanks to Thomas Michel!
- Simple daemon functionality, thanks to Gabriel Margiani!
- Link-time optimization: 20% smaller RPMs and executables
- Option to minimize notifications, useful in e.g. busy groups, thanks to flypig.
Translations
- We have a Weblate account now!
- Portuguese translation, thanks to Yield and Antonio Maretzek!
- Czech translation, thanks to PawelSpoon!
- Turkish translation, thanks to Oğuz Ersen!
- Nowegian translation, thanks to Allan Nordhøy!
- Many, many, many, MANY cleanup operations on Dutch, German, French, and Spanish, thanks to Nathan, Dryo, and J. Lavoie!
Fixes
- More stable reconnection management. Flight mode and network changes should now work as expected.
- Access contacts through the Nemo QML interface instead of raw contacts.db. This interface will probably be more stable than the raw SQLite, and keeps compatibility across 3.x and 4.x.
- A "privileged file" allows us to read contact lists again on SailfishOS 4.0
- More or less fixed video playback
- Fix lingering notifications on session activation, thanks to flypig!
- JPEG rotation is now correct in Whisperfish (but not yet on Android), thanks to Mirian Margiani.
- Image zoom is more intuitive for images that are almost the same size as the screen, thanks to Mirian Margiani.
Whisperfish 0.6.0-alpha.9
Fixes startup on upgraded contact database.
Whisperfish 0.6.0-alpha.8
Features/fixes
- Captcha filing at registration time, thanks to Gabriel Margiani! Seriously, this was a huge undertaking.
- Sailfish 4.0.45 compatibility, except for registration (#229, bug report on forum).
Whisperfish 0.6.0-alpha.7
Features
- Reactions show up as "R@number:EMOJI", instead of empty balloons. Thanks to Markus for this!
- Multiple password attempts! Thanks to Igon Makarov
Fixes
- Create the correct attachments download directory, should fix attachments downloading for new installations.
- Some phone numbers (notably with dashes, parantheses or dots) did not show up with names.
- New members in a group show up, group renames come through.
- Group members show up as names, not phone numbers, thanks to Thomas Michel.
- Fixes copying message to clipboard, thanks to Thomas Michel.
- Auto-focus password field, thanks to Markus.
Whisperfish 0.6.0-alpha.6
Features
- The conversation page got a complete overhaul in design. I hope you like it.
Fixes
- Fix a race condition during registration, which may corrupt the settings file.
- Sent messages update the session view
- More names show up correctly in session view (please file an issue if it's still buggy!)
- Session sections
- Sent attachments show up as thumbnails
- Some translation work in the (currently disfunctional) Device List page
Whisperfish 0.6.0-alpha.5
Features
- Sending new messages to a single contact, clean-up of contact selection
- Started French language translation
- French translation finished (thanks Thibaut Vandervelden)
- Spanish translation got a lot of clean-up (thanks carlosgonz)
- Settings page looks a lot nicer
Fixes
- Settings page revamped, looks a lot cleaner
- attachment_dir was not set on settings init.
- Contact DB fix for non-nemo users (new 3.4 installs, alternate users)
- Show build ID in about screen
- Notifications with vibration and sound
Whisperfish 0.6.0-alpha.4
The milestone on Gitlab for this release
Features:
- Sending attachments
- Registration via voice and text
- Connection status feedback
- Aarch64 version
Under the hood:
- Partial support new UUID-based identifiers
- Initial tooling for future database migrations
- Pre-key refreshing
- Attachment failure log (set attachment_log=true in harbour-whisperfish.conf)
Whisperfish 0.6.0-alpha.3
The milestone on Gitlab for this release
- Sending direct and group messages, notably no attachments.
Whisperfish 0.6.0-alpha.2
The milestone on Gitlab for this release
- Receiving messages and their attachments
Whisperfish 0.6.0-alpha.1
The milestone on Gitlab for this release
- Move the base code over to Rust, for easy linking to libsignal-protocol-c.
I made a write-up about Qt, Sailfish and event loops on my blog. - Implement most of the GUI and bind to the database (thank you, Markus, for all the work!)
- GUI performance improvement
Comments
delocoyo
Fri, 2021/12/10 - 22:35
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What is the channel in matrix? I cant find it.
delocoyo
Thu, 2021/12/09 - 17:08
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when will be possible to use whisperfish for a newer user?
delocoyo
Thu, 2021/12/02 - 17:16
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Thanks rubdos.
delocoyo
Thu, 2021/12/02 - 13:46
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Hej. I have not install other whisperfish conto now. The probkem is that I cant reach the captcha, and it breaks
rubdos
Thu, 2021/12/02 - 16:56
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Yes, registration is currently broken due to the reCAPTCHA again indeed. I hope to fix it some time soon.
delocoyo
Thu, 2021/12/02 - 11:11
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I just got a xz2c with 4.2 , and I cant install whisperfish in it. I had an xperia 10II and with 4.2 was working without problems?
rubdos
Thu, 2021/12/02 - 11:29
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What are the symptoms, what is going wrong? You cannot install it with Storeman, or you cannot register?
aviarus
Tue, 2021/11/23 - 13:05
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Downgrading openssl and installing beta 6 worked
aviarus
Tue, 2021/11/23 - 12:45
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is it possible to copy the settings from smoother device? i copied .local/share/harbour-whisperfish from an old sfos 3.4 device that cannot update and loaded the saved messages but the icon stayed red. now i thought i could hop over the reiteration on a 4.3 device but it gives the same strange result with the Last provided version here and also with the Last nightly build from gitlab
rubdos
Thu, 2021/12/02 - 11:28
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You need to copy over both ~/.local/share/harbour-whisperfish and ~/.config/harbour-whisperfish for this to work. Don't try to run the same config on two devices, make sure to disable the old divive (by renaming both directories on the old device, for example)
delocoyo
Tue, 2021/11/23 - 12:08
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So how can I install it in anew device?
rubdos
Tue, 2021/11/23 - 12:10
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Installation should just work. Apparently registration is broken on SailfishOS 4.3, so you need to have registered using an older version of SailfishOS. I haven't had the time to look at it yet. You can try the workaround of "deprecated" in the comments here: https://openrepos.net/comment/39319#comment-39319 ; make sure to remove the old OpenSSL package when you have registered.
delocoyo
Mon, 2021/11/22 - 08:12
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That great to hear it Rubdos. My thoughs was that anytime is something. Is not just to say bad words about Jolla, is just that anytime is a upgrde kind of like the set up that is in tge phone break. Thanks for your time.
delocoyo
Thu, 2021/11/18 - 22:02
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Isnt amazing that anytime there is an update is so much work to do to make the app work properly again? Isnt a collaboration to make it work smoothy from Jolla?
rubdos
Sat, 2021/11/20 - 20:54
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By the way: I'm in contact with some people at Jolla. I hear that some Jolla people are even using Whisperfish, which means I'm aware of some bugs before the EA releases (but often difficult to fix without hands-on, such as the 4.3 OpenSSL breakage).
slava
Fri, 2021/11/19 - 04:28
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I heard that there's something called "backward compatibility"...
delocoyo
Sat, 2021/11/20 - 09:42
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Whats that?
rubdos
Sat, 2021/11/20 - 20:53
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It's the idea that Jolla should be making sure that a minor version upgrade doesn't break any app. I agree with Slava's sentiment on the breakage between beta 6 and beta 7 here. Jolla should have carried OpenSSL 1.0 throughout the 4.x series, formally deprecating it and alerting app developers that it would be gone in 5.x series, instead of just dropping this bomb.
That said, all previous breakage was 100% due to me abusing undefined behaviour of the SailfishOS operating system. All those hacks are gone now (since the event-loop rework and the SFDK rework), and there's only a few undocumented APIs that we use (but existing APIs, not undefined behaviour). These undocumented APIs include our rendering of the reCAPTCHA (which is now stabilized in 4.3) and retrieval of contact names by phone number in the GUI.
deprecated
Sun, 2021/11/14 - 20:21
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For anyone having issues with beta 7 (latest, as of writing) on SFOS 4.3.0.12, I found a workaround. Unfortunately, it's intrusive:
This procedure works flawlessly on my Xperia XA2 Ultra. I went through it twice to make sure it was repeatable. I'll be happy to help if anyone needs assistance. I'm sure this will be ironed out in future Whisperfish releases, but for now this gets us both the latest SFOS and latest Whisperfish with minimal hassle. Good luck!
Edit: It seems this method breaks my SIM contexts for MMS, no idea why. journalctl is unhelpful, and mmslogger provides exactly nothing. Fresh flash to either 4.3.0.12 or 4.2.0.21 results in MMS working as normal. I'll try to figure out a way to get beta 6 installed on 4.3.0.12, register then update to beta 7. Will update as it comes.
Edit #2: Okay, so I finally figured out how to keep ofono working properly, have SFOS 4.3.0.12, AND have the latest Whisperfish:
This is the ONLY way I've gotten it to work correctly. If you install beta 7 first, it'll crash when it's supposed to display the captcha. I hope this helps someone.
rubdos
Sat, 2021/11/20 - 20:49
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I honestly wasn't aware that the CAPTCHA broke on 4.3 in general, I thought this issue was confined to some ports to non-Sony phones. Thanks for making me notice!
olf
Sat, 2021/11/20 - 20:43
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Note that the hard dependency on OpenSSL 1.0 (which is not in SailfishOS 4.3.0) has been resolved by the Beta-7.
And do not permanently enable the lpr_A7 repository, that is likely harming your SailfishOS installation sooner or later. Preferably use the last OpenSSL packages from Jolla, which still contain OpenSSL 1.0 (from SailfishOS 4.2.0), they are issue-freeb to install and remove, plus offered in a single purpose repository, which will not affect the integrity of your SailfishOS installation: https://openrepos.net/content/openssl111102/openssl-111-102
aviarus
Sat, 2021/11/13 - 16:04
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It crashes when it should display the captcha
rubdos
Sat, 2021/11/13 - 16:31
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I had an alike report on the forum with an XA, so apparently it's not confined to the Pinephone anymore. Thanks for reporting!
aviarus
Sat, 2021/11/13 - 16:01
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No on sfos 4.3.0.12 xperia 10ii aarch64 architecture
aviarus
Fri, 2021/11/12 - 09:07
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I am also willing to pay at this moment, because it says payment required
aviarus
Fri, 2021/11/12 - 09:03
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Although this fixes error 402, maybe it's a shot. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/pull/5121
aviarus
Fri, 2021/11/12 - 08:48
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I'm on aarch64:
[defaultuser@Xperia10II-DualSIM ~]$ ssu re
WARNING: ssu.ini does not seem to be writable. Setting values might not work.
Device release is currently: 4.3.0.12
[defaultuser@Xperia10II-DualSIM ~]$ harbour-whisperfish --verbose
[2021-11-12T05:46:52Z INFO harbour_whisperfish] Start main app (with autostart = false)
[D] unknown:0 - Using Wayland-EGL
library "libGLESv2_adreno.so" not found
library "eglSubDriverAndroid.so" not found
[2021-11-12T05:46:52Z INFO harbour_whisperfish::gui] QmlApp::application loaded - versio
n v0.6.0-beta.7
[W] __cpp_closure_14317703314545309294_impl:182 - Failed to load translator for ("sv-SE")
Searched "/usr/share/harbour-whisperfish/translations" for "harbour-whisperfish"
[W] unknown:0 - "Query failed: no such function: icu_load_collation Unable to execute sta
tement\nSELECT icu_load_collation('sv_SE', 'localeCollation')"
[W] unknown:0 - "Failed to configure collation for locale sv_SE: "
[W] unknown:0 - "Query failed: no such function: icu_load_collation Unable to execute sta
tement\nSELECT icu_load_collation('sv_SE', 'localeCollation')"
[W] unknown:0 - "Failed to configure collation for locale sv_SE: "
[W] unknown:0 - "Failed to attach key memory region for qtcontacts-sqlite-np: QSharedMemo
ry::attach (shmget): doesn't exist"
[W] unknown:0 - "Failed to open contacts transient store"
[W] unknown:0 - "Unable to open synchronous engine database connection"
[W] unknown:0 - QSqlQuery::prepare: database not open
[W] unknown:0 - "Failed to prepare distinct display label group selection query: \n SELE
CT DISTINCT DisplayLabelGroup FROM DisplayLabels ORDER BY DisplayLabelGroupSortOrder ASC"
[2021-11-12T05:46:52Z INFO harbour_whisperfish::worker::setup] SetupWorker::run
[2021-11-12T05:46:52Z INFO harbour_whisperfish::worker::setup] identity_key not found
[2021-11-12T05:46:52Z INFO harbour_whisperfish::config::settings] Setting default settin
gs.
[D] unknown:0 - Starting favorites query at 392 ms
[D] unknown:0 - Favorites queried in 564 ms
[D] unknown:0 - Starting metadata query at 701 ms
[D] unknown:0 - All queried in 722 ms
[2021-11-12T05:47:05Z INFO harbour_whisperfish::config::settings] Setting string country
_code
[2021-11-12T05:47:06Z INFO harbour_whisperfish::worker::setup] Using phone number: +4367
66517141
[2021-11-12T05:47:06Z DEBUG libsignal_service_actix::push_service] HTTP request GET https
://textsecure-service.whispersystems.org/v1/accounts/sms/code/+436766517141
[2021-11-12T05:47:06Z DEBUG libsignal_service_actix::push_service] AwcPushService::get re
sponse:
ClientResponse HTTP/1.1 402 Payment Required
headers:
"connection": "keep-alive"
"x-signal-timestamp": "1636696026883"
"content-length": "412"
"content-type": "text/html;charset=iso-8859-1"
"cache-control": "must-revalidate,no-cache,no-store"
"date": "Fri, 12 Nov 2021 05:47:06 GMT"
[2021-11-12T05:47:06Z TRACE libsignal_service_actix::push_service] Unhandled response wit
h body: Ok(b"\n\n\nError 402 Payment Required\n\n
HTTP ERROR 402
Payment Required
\n\nURI:/v1/accounts/sms/code/+436766517141
\nSTATUS:402\nMESSAGE:Payment Requi
red\nSERVLET:jersey\n\n\n\n\n"
)
greHome from GRE_HOME:/usr/bin
libxul.so is not found, in /usr/bin/libxul.so
JavaScript error: resource://gre/modules/XPCOMUtils.jsm, line 261: TypeError: Cc[aContrac
t] is undefined
rubdos
Fri, 2021/11/12 - 15:49
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Are you by any chance on a Pinephone? Because apparently the Captcha is still an issue on the Pinephone.
rubdos
Fri, 2021/11/12 - 15:48
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Please note that your phone number is readable in this log, you may want to edit this.
402 payment required means that you need to file a CAPTCHA. Signal abuses this status code. Don't you see a CAPTCHA? If not, please do state your full SailfishOS version and which device you use, because this is supposed to work fine.
If possible, it would be a lot easier if you could file an issue on Gitlab.
elakim
Wed, 2021/11/10 - 13:46
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Hi, I had the device linking to signal.desktop working, but as I started the desktop client again after a long while, it wanted to connect to my device again. That didn't work, so I upgraded the desktop client, and now the URI format in QR code has changed from tdevice: to sgnl: and Whisperfish no longer recognizes it.
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