Whisperfish (SailfishOS 3.4)

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 4.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).

What to expect

If you had a pre-existing, working 0.5 installation with default settings, migration should be a breeze. Notably not working:

• Creating groups, inviting new members, deleting members (planned for later)
• Message quotes (the UI element is there, but the implementation currently lacks)
• Many other UI features are just stubs at this point.
• Whisperfish as secondary device, if you register Whisperfish, your previous registration (Android/iOS) gets disabled.

SailfishOS platform version notes and known issues

The intention is to keep as many versions of SailfishOS supported for as long as possible. Some versions show bugs specific to that SailfishOS version. If it is not possible to upgrade to the version mentioned below, you can use the workarounds mentioned here.

Currently highest tested SailfishOS version: SailfishOS 4.3

SailfishOS 3.x series

Bugs present in the Sailfish 3.x series

In principle, Whisperfish works on SailfishOS 3.3, except for registration.

• Registration on SailfishOS 3.3. As a workaround, register on another device, and move over your data.

Installation on SailfishOS 3.x

Since the release of SailfishOS 4.3, there has been an ABI-incompatible change between 3.x and 4.x. Whisperfish is now built separately for 3.x and 4.x, and both packages are available in this repository. If Storeman cannot figure out the correct version for your 3.x installation, you can install Whisperfish via the commandline (after adding the repository):

zypper install harbour-whisperfish-0.6.0.beta.7-0.sf3.armv7hl

SailfishOS 4.x series

The Sailfish 4.x series introduced a few issues, and possibly new features; notably:

• Registration on SailfishOS 4.0.1.45 EA. The rendering of a reCAPTCHA does not work in any of the available webviews. This will be fixed in the next SailfishOS release. Meanwhile, use this patch which will be offered to you as an update after enabling this OpenRepos repository. Install the update and then register. Do not install it on any other version than SailfishOS 4.0, there's no need. If it still doesn't work, run zypper ref ; zypper dup -r openrepos-rubdos on the command line as root and accept the update of the three webview packages.
• Especially SailfishOS 4.2 required a major change in the event loop structure. Make sure you use Whisperfish 0.6.0-beta.6 or later.
• Registration is broken since SailfishOS 4.2 (SailfishOS 4.3 is as such also affected), again due to the reCAPTCHA rendering. We hope this will be magically fixed in SailfishOS 4.4.

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!

License 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+.