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. The build for SailfishOS 3.x is located in a separate OpenRepos application.
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).
Known issues and implemented features
Lot's of stuff should work. Check the forum for an up-to-date known issues list.
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!
Licence 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.12
Hotfix release for the new Signal root certificate
Changes
- Update root CA certificate for Signal production server (4096 bits RSA instead of 2048!)
- Multiple fixes for SailfishOS 3.4
- Fix storage migration corner case
- Fix some registration issues
- Fix cover scrolling behaviour
- Big update of libsignal-protocol version
- Misc layout and input field improvements
- Refactored some storage and Sailfish platform code
Whisperfish 0.6.0-beta.11
Mostly bugfixes for bugs that we introduced in beta.10, but also implements Whisperfish as secondary device. This release is basically completely due to direc85 and Gabriel Margiani; thank you both!
Changes
- Add `sailfish-qml` to dependencies for registration to work on new installs (thanks to direc85!)
- Fix config.yml migration code (thanks to direc85!)
- Improve handling SMS verification field input (#444 and #443, thanks to direc85!)
- Implement secondary device mode (thanks to Gabriel Margiani and ntninja!)
- Fix background mode (thanks to Gabriel Margiani and direc85!)
- Start a Catalan translation (thanks to Jaume Singlavalls!)
- Play a quiet message when a message arrives when the application is active (thanks to direc85)
- Fix sending to UUID-only contacts (thanks to Gabriel Margiani, fixed in an unrelated MR)
- Keep up with technical debt (several merge requests and pushes)
Whisperfish 0.6.0-beta.10 (code sprint edition!)
Many quality-of-life updates and technical debt fixes, thanks to the code sprint of Matti and Ruben!
Changes
- Update to Emoji 14 (thanks to direc85)
- Correct attachment showing for out-of-order downloads
- Allow resetting identity key through developer options
- Cover page design showing messages showing typing indicators (in cooperation with direc85)
- Implement typing indicators for groups and direct messages (turn on in settings)
- Implement captcha rendering through external application, and hence fix registration (thanks to direc85)
- Spit share plugin and compile them separately for Sailfish 3 or 4 (thanks to direc85)
- Fix message queuing and resending
- Migrate session records and identity storage to database
- Update libsignal-client (long overdue, cooperation with Gabriel Féron)
- Redesign registration page to combat phone number entry confusion (thanks to direc85)
- Work around Signal-Desktop issue with JPEG's sent as PNG's (thanks to direc85)
- Optimize Emoji rendering (thanks to direc85 and Mirian Margiani)
- Add RemovableMedia to privileges for sending Pictures from the SD card
- Implement archiving and pinning of sessions (thanks to direc85)
- Multiple UI fixes (thanks to direc85)
- Allow sending pictures directly from within Whisperfish (thanks to direc85)
- Give a warning for old Whisperfish versions (thanks to direc85)
- Show multiple attachments up to five
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
rossholmes
Sun, 2021/04/25 - 22:33
Permalink
This beta version is a huge update - thank you!!! Great work, the user experience is really getting there. I am using only SFOS apps so to me it's a massive thing - appreciate it!
rubdos
Mon, 2021/04/26 - 10:16
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Nice to hear such kind words :-)
rubdos
Fri, 2021/04/23 - 10:15
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The UI feature is already there, but the backend implementation is not; I will most probably disable it for the beta, and then implement it properly. It's luckily not a huge work anymore :-)
rossholmes
Mon, 2021/04/19 - 14:33
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Hi there, I got stuck during the registration process as when I get to Captcha part the page stays white blank - there is a little circle for few seconds and after it says Cannot load Captcha, check internet connection. Is there a workaround?
rubdos
Mon, 2021/04/19 - 15:30
Permalink
Workaround is documented here: https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/4-0-1-45-regression-in-rendering-of-recap...
This is a bug in SailfishOS 4.0, and will be fixed in SailfishOS 4.1.
rossholmes
Mon, 2021/04/19 - 15:44
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Thank you so much! Love your work
rubdos
Mon, 2021/04/19 - 15:47
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Glad I can help! Next release should be soon™ :-)
TMavica
Mon, 2021/04/19 - 09:17
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aarch64
rubdos
Mon, 2021/04/19 - 12:07
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It's there, it's always been there.
TMavica
Wed, 2021/03/31 - 10:08
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I want a 64 bit build
rubdos
Wed, 2021/03/31 - 10:42
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There is an aarch64 build, if that's what you mean. I haven't tested it (no device with aarch64 SailfishOS), but it should work. Or do you mean an x86_64/amd64 build?
yomark
Sat, 2021/03/20 - 11:49
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x2, tnx rubdos!
dalas_revo
Thu, 2021/03/18 - 20:59
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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
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