janmalec / scli

a simple terminal user interface for signal messenger (using signal-cli)

scli

scli is a simple terminal user interface for Signal. It uses signal-cli and urwid.

Installation

• Firstly, you need to install signal-cli. Follow the guide provided in the README.
• Install libunixsocket-java from your package manager if you have not installed it yet. (Arch Linux users should install libmatthew-unix-java from AUR. If you installed signal-cli from AUR, you can skip this step.)
• Install urwid. You can install it trough your distributions package manager (search for python3-urwid or python-urwid) or you can use pip to install: pip3 install urwid.
• (Optional) Install urwid_readline if you want readline keybinds while typing. It may be available through your distribution's package manager as python3-urwid_readline or python-urwid_readline, or you can install it through pip with pip install urwid_readline

Linking your device and using

scli does not provide anything for registering/linking, you need to do this using signal-cli.

For linking your computer follow these steps (for registering a new number, see README of signal-cli)

• Run signal-cli link -n "DEVICE_NAME". (DEVICE_NAME is just an alias for your computer. You can skip -n "DEVICE_NAME part. Without that, your devices alias will be just cli.)
• This will output tsdevice:/... URI (Do not terminate this command, it needs to be alive during linking process. Continue in a separate terminal.). Copy the URI and create a QR code with it using qrencode (or any other QR code generator of your choice):

qrencode 'LINK' -o qrcode.png

• Open Signal application on your phone and scan the QR code you just generated.
• Run signal-cli -u PHONE_NUMBER receive. This is required to fetch your contacts for the first time.
• Now you can start using:

scli

Note: PHONE_NUMBER starts with + followed by the country code.

Usage

A simple two-paned interface is provided. Left pane contains the contact list and the right pane contains the conversation. You can switch focus between panes by hitting Tab (or Shift + Tab). Hitting tab for the first time focuses the conversation, hitting it again focuses to input line. So the tab order is Contacts -> Conversation -> Input, you can use Shift + Tab for cycling backwards.

Keys

• Use j/k to go down/up in contacts list or in messages.
• Hitting enter on a contact starts conversation and focuses to input line.
• Hitting l on a contact only starts conversation.
• Hitting o on a message opens the URL if there is one, if not it opens the attachment if there is one.
• Hitting enter on a message opens the attachment if there is one, if not it opens the URL if there is one.
• Hitting y on a message puts it into system clipboard. (needs xclip)
• g focuses first contact/message.
• G focuses last contact/message.
• d deletes the message from your screen (and from your history, if history is enabled).
• i show a popup that contains detailed information about the message.

Commands

There are some basic commands that you can use. Hit : to enter command mode (or simply focus the input line and type :).

• :quit or :q simply quits the program.
• :openUrl or :u opens last URL in messages, if there is one.
• :openAttach or :o opens last attachment in messages, if there is one.
• :attach FILE_PATH or :a FILE_PATH attaches given file to message.
• :attachClip or :c attaches clipboard content to message. This command tries to detect clipboard content. If clipboard contains something with the mime-type image/png or image/jpg, simply attaches the image to message. If clipboard contains text/uri-list it attaches all the files in that URI list to your message. This command needs xclip installed.
• :toggleNotifications or :n toggles desktop notifications.
• :edit or :e lets you edit your message in your $EDITOR.
• :toggleAutohide or :h toggles autohide property of the contacts pane.

Examples:

:attach ~/cute_dog.png check out this cute dog!
:attachclip here is another picture.

Note: Commands are case insensitive, :quit and :qUiT does the same thing.

Searching

There is a built-in search feature. Simply hit / while you are on the chat window (or focus the input line then type /) and start typing, the chat will be filtered out based on your input. You can focus any of the search results and hit enter (or l) to open that result in full conversation.

For searching through contacts, you need to hit / while you are on the contacts window and start typing, contacts will be filtered out while you are typing. Hit enter to focus the results. Hitting Esc will clear the search.

Configuration

There are some simple configuration options. You can either pass them as command-line arguments or add them to your configuration file. Run scli --help to see options. Configuration file syntax is also pretty easy. Lines starting with # and empty lines are ignored, other lines should consist key=value pairs.

Example

scli -u [phone] --enable-notifications=true

Configuration file equivalent of this command is:

# Long option forms are used in config file. (u=+123... is not valid.)
username=[phone]
enable-notifications=true

Screenshots