platform-imessage

platform-imessage is the iMessage integration in Beeper Desktop on macOS. It's built on the deprecated Platform SDK.

Getting Started

It is not possible to use local builds with Beeper Desktop. You can still interact with this project as a library, see texthsq/platform-test-lib as an example how Platform SDK can be used.

Instructions excerpt

Note

This is a snippet from our internal documentation shared as a reference. You won't be able to run this project with Beeper Desktop.

platform-imessage implements local iMessage support on macOS. This requires various permissions that must be granted to the app. There are various pitfalls with this:

[!IMPORTANT] When adding a local iMessage account to Beeper, you'll be prompted for several permissions. One of them is "Accessibility", which you need to grant in a System Settings window that the app opens for you. In development, grant this permission to your terminal program, text editor, or wherever you're running yarn dev from INSTEAD of Beeper or Electron.

[!TIP] If you're having trouble granting permissions to the app, try running:

tccutil reset All com.github.Electron

This completely wipes away the permission state of the app with that bundle identifier in the "Privacy & Security" section of System Settings, which gives you a clean slate to work with. If that still doesn't work:

• Try passing the bundle ID of your terminal emulator, text editor, or whatever you run yarn dev in to tccutil instead of com.github.Electron. Example bundle identifiers:
  • iTerm2: com.googlecode.iterm2
  • Ghostty: com.mitchellh.ghostty
  • VS Code: com.microsoft.VSCode
  • Cursor: com.todesktop.230313mzl4w4u92 (yes, actually)
• Try running any relevant tccutil commands, completely quitting and restarting all apps involved, and trying again.
• Try rebooting after running the tccutil command.

macOS examines the ultimately "responsible" process when deciding whether permissions are granted or not. Because yarn dev (and therefore Electron) are subprocesses of your terminal/text editor and the kernel is unable to know that you ran the command yourself, the permissions must be granted there instead of Electron itself. (This is only relevant in a development environment.)

SwiftServer

SwiftServer exposes Swift functions to JS via NAPI/node-swift and handles all invocation of native Apple methods.

Quirks

• Transparent thread merging: iMessage has separate threads for each address/sender ID (email or phone #) but transparently merges threads belonging to the same contact in the UI. Texts app shows separate threads and performs no merging. Imagine if we had two threads, stevejobs@apple.com and sjobs@apple.com. When calling a deep link to select either thread, sometimes it'll select the thread in the sidebar, other times it'd create a new compose cell. The logic is unknown.

• MessagesController.pasteFileInBodyField: On Big Sur, using pasteboard.setString(fileURL.relativeString, forType: .fileURL) doesn't paste the file itself but a link. Monterey has intended behavior.

• elements.selectedThreadCell is nil after pin/unpin because no cells are selected. imessage://open?message-guid= will not select the thread in sidebar (elements.selectedThreadCell == nil) if it's already open but imessage://open?address= will.

• After elements.searchField was clicked: elements.conversationsList will be nil, selected item in sidebar will not always be reflective of the messages list, calling a deep link will not update sidebar but only the messages list, CKLastSelectedItemIdentifier won't be updated.

Building

# for debugging:
rm binaries/*/libNodeAPI.dylib # needed only when you get ENOENT
bun run build:swift --debug --watch

# for shipping to prod:
bun run build:swift

Testing

node src/SwiftServer/test-script.js
electron src/SwiftServer/test-script.js

License

MIT