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.
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
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.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
rossholmes
Sat, 2021/01/16 - 14:47
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Hmm. Suddenly started to work :) Ignore the above please. And thank you again!
rubdos
Sat, 2021/01/16 - 23:28
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Signal's servers were down! Things seem to be better now :-)
I've taken notes to see how we can respond to this with a message, at https://gitlab.com/rubdos/whisperfish/-/issues/175.
rossholmes
Sat, 2021/01/16 - 11:03
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Thanks very much for the app! I've installed it and went through the registration process. I am able to receive messages, but the ones I send doesn't reach my contact. What am I missing? Cheers
amaretzek
Thu, 2021/01/14 - 00:16
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Still in need for a citation for "The people behind Signal have been quite outspoken against third-party clients in the past"? https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issuecomment-217211165 (may 2016)
rubdos
Sat, 2021/01/16 - 23:27
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Added!
damoleon
Thu, 2021/01/14 - 00:11
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Hi, I’ve installed alpha7 successfully. Thanks a lot !
My contacts cannot add me to a group though.
They get a message like “the person you added doesn’t accept “new groups” and must update signal”
Is there something i can do or just wait for this to be implemented ?
Thank you in advance
rubdos
Thu, 2021/01/14 - 00:36
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Looks like they now enforce GroupsV2, so I'll move that up the priority list.
pvcn
Wed, 2021/01/13 - 13:03
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Thanks for the update! Do i understand the release notes right that opening attachments now works, but only if i deinstall whisperfish and reinstall it again?
rubdos
Wed, 2021/01/13 - 14:04
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There should be no need to reinstall. If it still does not work, please get in touch, because it should just work™.
huggymann
Mon, 2021/01/11 - 23:10
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Hello
I am one of the Installations where attachment (image in this case) is not working. By tapping on the attachment a new empty page is coming. Dont know what should have been coming instead. If i click on open the app crashes and i go back to sailfish app overview immediately.
I wrote also on freenode. But in browser . Is there a sailfish app?
rubdos
Tue, 2021/01/12 - 17:47
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Figured this out over chat, and meanwhile, alpha.7 should've solved this for everyone else!
miglincit
Fri, 2021/01/08 - 10:08
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I just installed Whisperfish but there is no registration porocess ?!
rubdos
Fri, 2021/01/08 - 11:16
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Hi! Could you check that you have the latest version, alpha.6? Have you had a previous installation of Whisperfish? What do you see instead of the registration? Thanks for your feedback, much appreciated! If you want to have a quicker response, have a chat on Matrix or IRC, e.g. via https://webchat.freenode.net/#whisperfish .
delocoyo
Wed, 2020/12/30 - 03:47
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I see. Maybe you can get help from the community? You have done a great job in a short time. Keep rocking rubdos
rubdos
Wed, 2020/12/30 - 13:03
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Thanks! Yes, I have a lot of help, especially half a year ago. Currently, the most import aspect is testing and getting things a lot more stable :-)
We're having a small chatting community on Matrix and Freenode, feel free to come say hi!
delocoyo
Fri, 2020/12/25 - 21:02
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I have tried the las verdion, and I am impress. Thanks a lot rubdos. my question is if at somepoint the videl or the calling will be presrnt at some point, so I can stop uding android one. Thank u soooo much
rubdos
Sat, 2020/12/26 - 15:01
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I do want video calling and audio calling at some point in the future, but it'll be a lot of work. Track it here: https://gitlab.com/rubdos/whisperfish/-/milestones/5
delocoyo
Tue, 2020/12/22 - 16:30
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I cant find those directories
rubdos
Tue, 2020/12/22 - 18:33
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Could you send me an email on whisperfish [at] rubdos [dot] be, or come on Matrix or IRC (see description)? We'll sort it out there.
huggymann
Tue, 2020/12/22 - 00:04
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Hello. I habe the app installed but forgot my password and would lile to completely re Setup the app. Even after uninstall and install, it is in the Same state, asking me for pw and shows that i have connected with my mobile number. Am i stupid? Could you help me?
rubdos
Tue, 2020/12/22 - 00:12
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Hi! No, you're not stupid at all. The data is in `.local/share/harbour-whisperfish` and `.config/harbour-whisperfish`. If you delete those two directories, you can re-register. I have not yet made a reset button.
I've made a note about a "reset"-feature here: https://gitlab.com/rubdos/whisperfish/-/issues/155
Rene666
Wed, 2020/12/09 - 13:24
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Hello, I've installed the Whisperfish. I cannot send or receive messages. When sending, there are always inadmissible recipients. Can you help me? Thank you
Hallo, ich habe mir die Whisperfish installiert. Ich kann weder senden noch Empfangen von Nachrichten. Beim versenden kommt immer unzulässige Empfänger. Können Sie mir helfen? Danke
rubdos
Wed, 2020/12/09 - 13:40
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Hi! Could you get in touch with me over e-mail? I do not write German myself, but I can read it pretty well, so feel free to write me in German. whisperfish [at] rubdos.be will arrive well :-)
You can also join on the Matrix or IRC channel, as described in the app description.
If at all possible, I'd like to see a trace log of Whisperfish until right after you log in with your password. You can get this by running `RUST_LOG=trace harbour-whisperfish > whisperfish.log`, then logging in, closing the app, and sending me the resulting log file (whisperfish.log in your home directory). You may want to open the log file and censor out the connect URL half way through, you can find it by looking for your own phone number.
If the above is not clear, just get in touch, and I'll walk you through it!
pvcn
Thu, 2020/12/03 - 08:42
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Thank you very much for your work on this! Updated a few days ago, but push notifications don't work, just got a lot of old messages after reboot...
rubdos
Thu, 2020/12/03 - 13:45
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Hmm, they should work. Can you get in touch via Matrix/IRC/mail? Then we can sort it out! Feel free to drop a message at me [at] rubdos [dot] be if you're not on Matrix/IRC.
pvcn
Fri, 2020/12/04 - 20:37
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Ok, thanks, i just wrote you a mail to whisperfish[at]rubdos.be
NGC_Ollie
Fri, 2020/11/27 - 01:52
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Ok, you got me, I installed alpha5. Thanks for that, works like a charm, a huge improvement, especially the groups. Only tiny bits I found:
- when I switch from a dark to a light ambiance the font stays in the dark mode.
- sometimes I'm unable to see my last messages in the groups when on the conversations overview. I don't really care about that, but it's good to know.
- Image preview from pics I sent stay as a filled rectangle, no preview. But it sends, that's important!
Would you like to have issues/tickets on github or do you prefer comments like this?
rubdos
Fri, 2020/11/27 - 10:49
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Issues on Gitlab work the best, indeed. We're aware of the second issue (there's a merge request for that in progress), but number one and three are currently undocumented. Filing at https://gitlab.com/rubdos/whisperfish/-/issues/new would be thoroughly apperiated!
I'm glad you like the new version :-)
NGC_Ollie
Thu, 2020/11/26 - 09:29
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Actually there is no main show stopper, so you're right, beta might be considerable, since 0.5 gets more and more unstable. I need a smooth transition from 0.5 to 0.6, that's all, because I use WF since ages and I don't want to lose all conversations. I need that app on a daily basis, because I avoid any messenger like whatsapp, Telegram or worse.
rubdos
Thu, 2020/11/26 - 14:59
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FWIW, the only known issue on Whisperfish 0.6 alpha.5 is during registration. If you currently run 0.5, I think you'd be happy to try out alpha.5 already. I'm using it as daily, together with many others. 0.6 uses the exact same db and storage as 0.5, the compatibility was my first priority.
EDIT: wrt to 0.5 compatibility, 0.6 only supports the encrypted database ON, unencrypted database is untested (at least by me), but should be easy enough to implement. Let me know if you have any peculiar settings, because we've mainly tested default settings!
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