imsg (gnufood)

Overview

imsg is a Rust command-line tool and Linux desktop app that talks to a paired iPhone over the standard Bluetooth Message Access Profile (MAP) and Phone Book Access Profile (PBAP). It needs Linux with BlueZ, and no Mac, iCloud credentials or Apple ID login. It is MIT-licensed at github.com/gnufood/imsg and published on crates.io. The project is pre-1.0 and warns that APIs, flags and config can change; version 0.5.0 shipped on 2026-09-21.

Key features

• List, read, send, delete and restore messages on the phone, filtered by folder, sender, date or unread state
• Conversation threads grouped by contact
• A background daemon keeps the MAP session open and syncs an encrypted SQLCipher store, with per-folder backfill
• Hub and spoke mode reaches a phone paired to another machine over QUIC (iroh), without port forwarding
• Pulls contacts and call history from the phone over PBAP
• Linux desktop app as .deb, .rpm and AppImage

Pricing

Free under the MIT license, with no paid tiers. You need a Linux machine with Bluetooth and an iPhone paired to it.

How it compares to Linq

Linq is a managed REST API with dedicated lines, webhooks, group chats, attachments and iMessage features such as tapbacks and typing indicators, from $260 a month for Pro. imsg relays plain text through your own iPhone. Its docs say iOS reports every message as type SMS_GSM, the CLI describes sending as "Send an SMS", and MMS attachments are not passed through yet. It has no HTTP API or webhooks: programs use the CLI or the daemon's Unix-socket protocol.

Best for

Individuals and small projects that want to read and send texts from a Linux machine through their own iPhone.

Sources

• github.com/gnufood/imsg
• github.com/gnufood/imsg/blob/main/docs/cli.md
• github.com/gnufood/imsg/blob/main/docs/index.md
• github.com/gnufood/imsg/blob/main/docs/data-formats/bmessage-format.md
• github.com/gnufood/imsg/blob/main/docs/ipc/ipc-protocol.md
• github.com/gnufood/imsg/blob/main/docs/storage/sending-a-message.md
• github.com/gnufood/imsg/blob/main/docs/storage/sync-cursors.md
• github.com/gnufood/imsg/blob/main/ROADMAP.md
• github.com/gnufood/imsg/blob/main/LICENSE
• github.com/gnufood/imsg/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md
• crates.io/crates/imsg
• releases.gnu.foo/imsg