3 signal-cli is a commandline interface for
[libsignal-service-java](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/libsignal-service-java). It supports registering, verifying, sending and receiving messages. To be able to receive messages signal-cli uses a
[patched libsignal-service-java](https://github.com/AsamK/libsignal-service-java), because libsignal-service-java
[does not yet support registering for the websocket support](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/libsignal-service-java/pull/5) nor
[provisioning as a slave device](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/libsignal-service-java/pull/21). For registering you need a phone number where you can receive SMS or incoming calls.
4 It is primarily intended to be used on servers to notify admins of important events. For this use-case, it has a dbus interface, that can be used to send messages from any programming language that has dbus bindings.
8 You can
[build signal-cli](#building) yourself, or use the [provided binary files](https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/releases/latest), which should work on Linux, macOS and Windows. For Arch Linux there is also a
[package in AUR](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/signal-cli/). You need to have at least JRE
7 installed, to run signal-cli.
10 ### Install system-wide on Linux
11 See
[latest version](https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/releases).
13 export VERSION=<latest version, format "x.y.z">
14 wget https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/releases/download/v"${VERSION}"/signal-cli-"${VERSION}".tar.gz
15 sudo tar xf signal-cli-"${VERSION}".tar.gz -C /opt
16 sudo ln -sf /opt/signal-cli-"${VERSION}"/bin/signal-cli /usr/local/bin/
21 usage: signal-cli [-h] [-v] [--config CONFIG] [-u USERNAME | --dbus | --dbus-system] {link,addDevice,listDevices,removeDevice,register,verify,send,quitGroup,updateGroup,listIdentities,trust,receive,daemon} ...
23 See also:
[man page in asciidoc format](https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/blob/master/man/signal-cli.1.txt)
25 * Register a number (with SMS verification)
27 signal-cli -u USERNAME register
29 * Register a number (with voice verification)
31 signal-cli -u USERNAME register -v
33 * Verify the number using the code received via SMS or voice
35 signal-cli -u USERNAME verify CODE
37 * Send a message to one or more recipients
39 signal-cli -u USERNAME send -m "This is a message" [RECIPIENT [RECIPIENT ...]] [-a [ATTACHMENT [ATTACHMENT ...]]]
41 * Pipe the message content from another process.
43 uname -a | signal-cli -u USERNAME send [RECIPIENT [RECIPIENT ...]]
47 signal-cli -u USERNAME receive
53 signal-cli -u USERNAME updateGroup -n "Group name" -m [MEMBER [MEMBER ...]]
57 signal-cli -u USERNAME updateGroup -g GROUP_ID -n "New group name" -a "AVATAR_IMAGE_FILE"
59 * Add member to a group
61 signal-cli -u USERNAME updateGroup -g GROUP_ID -m "NEW_MEMBER"
65 signal-cli -u USERNAME quitGroup -g GROUP_ID
67 * Send a message to a group
69 signal-cli -u USERNAME send -m "This is a message" -g GROUP_ID
71 * Linking other devices (Provisioning)
73 * Connect to another device
75 signal-cli link -n "optional device name"
77 This shows a "tsdevice:/…" link, if you want to connect to another signal-cli instance, you can just use this link. If you want to link to and Android device, create a QR code with the link (e.g. with
[qrencode](https://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/)) and scan that in the Signal Android app.
81 signal-cli -u USERNAME addDevice --uri "tsdevice:/…"
83 The "tsdevice:/…" link is the one shown by the new signal-cli instance or contained in the QR code shown in Signal-Desktop or similar apps.
84 Only the master device (that was registered directly, not linked) can add new devices.
86 * Manage linked devices
88 signal-cli -u USERNAME listDevices
90 signal-cli -u USERNAME removeDevice -d DEVICE_ID
96 signal-cli -u USERNAME listIdentities
98 * View known keys of one number
100 signal-cli -u USERNAME listIdentities -n NUMBER
102 * Trust new key, after having verified it
104 signal-cli -u USERNAME trust -v FINGER_PRINT NUMBER
106 * Trust new key, without having verified it. Only use this if you don't care about security
108 signal-cli -u USERNAME trust -a NUMBER
110 * Set configuration directory
112 signal-cli --config=/home/other_user/.config/signal
114 This is particularily useful in the case, when you would like to run the signal-cli tool as a different user as the one, that was used to register the account. You should make sure, that the caller has full read/write access to the given directory.
118 signal-cli can run in daemon mode and provides an experimental dbus interface.
119 For dbus support you need jni/unix-java.so installed on your system (Debian: libunixsocket-java ArchLinux: libmatthew-unix-java (AUR)).
121 * Run in daemon mode (dbus session bus)
123 signal-cli -u USERNAME daemon
125 * Send a message via dbus
127 signal-cli --dbus send -m "Message" [RECIPIENT [RECIPIENT ...]] [-a [ATTACHMENT [ATTACHMENT ...]]]
131 To run on the system bus you need to take some additional steps.
132 It’s advisable to run signal-cli as a separate unix user, the following steps assume you created a user named *signal-cli*.
133 These steps, executed as root, should work on all distributions using systemd.
135 Mind the fact that signal.service executes the signal-cli with "--config /var/lib/signal-cli".
136 If you registered with user signal-cli, remove the config option.
139 cp data/org.asamk.Signal.conf /etc/dbus-1/system.d/
140 cp data/org.asamk.Signal.service /usr/share/dbus-1/system-services/
141 cp data/signal.service /etc/systemd/system/
142 sed -i -e "s|%dir%|<INSERT_INSTALL_PATH>|" -e "s|%number%|<INSERT_YOUR_NUMBER>|" /etc/systemd/system/signal.service
143 systemctl daemon-reload
144 systemctl enable signal.service
145 systemctl reload dbus.service
148 Make sure to use "--dbus-system" with the send command, the service will be autostarted by dbus the first time it is requested.
152 The password and cryptographic keys are created when registering and stored in the current users home directory:
154 $HOME/.config/signal/data/
156 For legacy users, the old config directory is used as a fallback:
158 $HOME/.config/textsecure/data/
162 This project uses
[Gradle](http://gradle.org) for building and maintaining
163 dependencies. If you have a recent gradle version installed, you can replace
`./gradlew` with
`gradle` in the following steps.
165 1. Checkout the source somewhere on your filesystem with
167 git clone https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli.git
173 3. Create shell wrapper in *build/install/signal-cli/bin*:
175 ./gradlew installDist
177 4. Create tar file in *build/distributions*:
182 If you use a version of the Oracle JRE and get an InvalidKeyException you need to enable unlimited strength crypto. See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/
6481627/java-security-illegal-key-size-or-default-parameters for instructions.
186 This project uses libsignal-service-java from Open Whisper Systems:
188 https://github.com/WhisperSystems/libsignal-service-java
190 Licensed under the GPLv3: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-
3.0.html