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 4.3
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.
- Registration is broken since SailfishOS 4.2 (SailfishOS 4.3 is as such also affected), again due to the reCAPTCHA rendering. We hope this will be magically fixed in SailfishOS 4.4.
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.9
Fixes for stuff in beta.8, mostly.
Changes
- Fix for emoji reaction parsing that could cause a crash
- Fix a crash when manually refreshing a group
- Fix config file location after the Sailjail implementation
- Fix creating debug symbols in CI and offline, run LTO on CI. Debug symbols are now hosted alongside nightl RPMs (and probably also here, let's see how the CD copes)
- Add new config paths to MyBackup paths
Whisperfish 0.6.0-beta.8
A bunch of quality-of-life updates, and SailfishOS 4.4 compatibilty! Direc85 did a lot of work in this release. If you consider donating to me for Whisperfish, please also consider buying direc85 a coffee.
Changes
- Display reaction emoji correctly
- Compute and show safety numbers.
- Collection of small UI improvements, thanks to direc85
- Upscale colored images
- Use the largest size icon everywhere (crispier UI)
- Install all the harbour-whisperfish.png icon sizes (launcher icon always looks the best)
- Disable click-message-to-reply signal until implemented (less accidental visual noise)
- Increase the cover page icon size a bit (looks a little less empty)
- Remove notification on Whisperfish when message has been read on a linked device, thanks to direc85
- Show your own phone number as "Note to Self", with a note icon, thanks to direc85.
- Implement "Reset secure session"
- Lots of background and backend updates for a bit more stability
- Implement muting a session, thanks to direc85
- Implement SailJail in SailfishOS 4.4
- Implement showing emoji reactions
- Implement a captcha workaround
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
dalas_revo
Thu, 2021/03/18 - 20:59
Permalink
Hi @rubdos, thanks a lot for this app! Unfortunately I have a problem: it won't start, I see the spinning circle and then it closes again. When starting from terminal, I see:
I am on a freshly installed XA2 on SFOS 4.0.1.48.
rubdos
Fri, 2021/03/19 - 01:02
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Owkay, I just tried to do the backport of the relevant patches, but it's a mess to back port. Beta.1 will include a totally new GUI and a big refactor of the backend, so it's non-trivial conflicts a volonté here.
I'll prepare a version alpha.9 that ignores the error instead, such that WF will start again. I'm spending a lot of time getting beta.1 in shape, it'll be awesome!
dalas_revo
Fri, 2021/03/19 - 10:10
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Thanks for your hard work on this issue and on the app!
rubdos
Thu, 2021/03/18 - 21:45
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Thanks for reporting, I'll try to fix that tomorrow in a new alpha.9. I didn't realize that I had not included the contact fixes in alpha.8. That probably means that practically nobody can use Whisperfish on 4.0.1.48, but you're the first to report. Pretty curious.
nerd7473
Wed, 2021/03/10 - 18:46
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Will we get videocalls eventually?
rubdos
Wed, 2021/03/10 - 21:36
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Very very eventually, I hope to implement that indeed :-)
delocoyo
Thu, 2021/02/25 - 23:11
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noax8 ....I cant join
rubdos
Fri, 2021/02/26 - 10:54
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I've sent you an invite, hope that's better now :)
delocoyo
Thu, 2021/02/25 - 15:36
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I cant find the room in matrix using Elements
rubdos
Thu, 2021/02/25 - 21:39
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By the way, if you still want to join, try to type /join #whisperfish:rubdos.be in any chat. Otherwise, let me know your Matrix username and I'll invite you!
delocoyo
Thu, 2021/02/25 - 15:24
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I have just send it in gitlab. I dont if thats tge best way for you,
rubdos
Thu, 2021/02/25 - 15:53
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Yes, let's continue this on Gitlab, that's perfect :-)
delocoyo
Thu, 2021/02/25 - 15:03
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Also if I try to open, holfing the message I cab open or delete. If I push open , the app failed.
delocoyo
Thu, 2021/02/25 - 14:58
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And I can even heard the audios
delocoyo
Thu, 2021/02/25 - 14:57
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Where should I send it to you?
delocoyo
Thu, 2021/02/25 - 12:31
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Hej rubdos. Been in koli 4 I cant read or see pictures that people is sending to me. I receive them, but cant open them.
rubdos
Thu, 2021/02/25 - 13:22
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Did this work before? Do their thumbnails show up? Please show me the contents of `.config/harbour-whisperfish/harbour-whisperfish.conf`, e.g. by running `cat .config/harbour-whisperfish/harbour-whisperfish.conf | grep attachment`. I think I know what bug this is; if I'm right this will be solved in the next release, but I'll walk you through getting it fixed already.
konst
Thu, 2021/02/25 - 10:30
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Hello! The app doesn't start. Freshly installed SFOS on XA2, 4.0.1.48.
When I tap on the icon, it moves in the screen with other running apps, then disappears in ~5 seconds
inte
Thu, 2021/02/18 - 01:54
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Is it just me or are conatcts not syncing any more in 4.0.1.48? And, by the way, the contact name shown previously appears to be the name stored in the nickname field which is not optimal since messenger id is stored in this field by the system when using the built in chat function??
rubdos
Thu, 2021/02/18 - 13:49
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Definitely not just you. It's in the description:
This is fixed in the master branch. Maybe I should branch out *yet another* alpha, now that 4.0 is actually released...
edp17
Fri, 2021/02/12 - 15:49
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Hello,
Thank you for working on native a Signal client.
The previous ones worked fine but the latest version on my Note4 port (SFOS 4.0.1.45) doesn't work. When I hit the Register button, I only get a white screen, then little later it displays a message at the top: "Could not connect to the reCAPTCHA service. Please check your internet connection and reload to get a reCAPTCHA challenge."
The internet (wifi) is on as I just installed the app and there is no way to reload the page. There is some log here: https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/XYw92dYNKv/
rubdos
Fri, 2021/02/12 - 15:57
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This is sadly something we didn't get to work around on 4.0. See known issues here in the description and on https://gitlab.com/rubdos/whisperfish/-/wikis/home
I suggest you register on a 3.4 device and copy over your storage directories, we do not a have a fix handy yet, we're awaiting a bug report with Jolla.
edp17
Fri, 2021/02/12 - 16:33
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Thank you. I'll try that.
rubdos
Fri, 2021/02/12 - 18:44
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Check https://gitlab.com/rubdos/whisperfish/-/issues/229 for the right directories!
lunatix
Wed, 2021/02/10 - 18:32
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Hello @rubdos and thank you very much for this app. Here my few questions:
- Do you confirm that we cannot run the android app and your app at the same time?
- Is there any workaround to join existing groups ? Or do we need to create new groups ourselves?
- Any plan to implement the "swipe move" to answer to a specific message?
Once again, thank you very much for your work, keep it up!
rubdos
Wed, 2021/02/10 - 20:02
Permalink
Yes, Whisperfish and the Android Signal app are both "primary device" apps. Ntninja has a work-in-progress branch that would enable Whisperfish to act as "secondary device", which would enable using WF and an official app at the same time. This is not a priority for me though.
No workaround for GroupV2, we have to implement completely new crypto for this. Creating groups from Whisperfish is also not possible. The only thing you can do, is to ask a group member to create a new group that includes you from the beginning. GroupV2 is high on the priority list because of several reasons.
Swipe move? If you refer to "reacting" to a message (both with emoji and with text), yes, this is planned, but not a priority currently.
lunatix
Wed, 2021/02/10 - 20:38
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Thank you for your answers!
deprecated
Tue, 2021/02/09 - 20:14
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@rubdos Thank you for all your hard work and devotion to our community. If there's anything I can help with (testing, trying different configurations, etc.) I'll be glad to do so.
Am I correct in assuming that, if I register Whisperfish before updating to Sailfish 4.x, the captcha rendering should work okay?
Thank you!
rubdos
Wed, 2021/02/10 - 11:30
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Very correct assumption! I urge everyone to register before upgrading to 4.0, because I'm not sure whether we will resolve this issue before 4.1 comes out. There seems to be an issue with Jolla's library.
Testing is very much appreciated indeed. If you want to live on the edge, you can download the master branch builds, but if you do so, please come have a chat on IRC or Matrix :-)
csg1976
Mon, 2021/02/08 - 11:28
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Cannot register for some reason. "Client could not be set up"
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