These notes discuss the installation of the Mautrix iMessage bridge. This will involve installing a websocket proxy and the bridge component on a Mac (or other system running macOS), and setting up a VPN between the Mac and your Synapse server using ZeroTier.
curl -s 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zerotier/ZeroTierOne/master/doc/contact%40zerotier.com.gpg' | gpg --import && \ if z=$(curl -s 'https://install.zerotier.com/' | gpg); then echo "$z" | sudo bash; fi
Download the installer from zerotier.com and install it
sudo zerotier-cli join <network-id>Barcelona is a component used by the bridge to interface with the iMessage service, and it will need to be built from source code. You'll need to run these commands from your preferred terminal on the Mac:
mkdir -p ~/src/{mautrix-imessage,mautrix-wsproxy,barcelona-mautrix}brew install xcodegen xcbeautify && sudo gem install xcprettycd ~git clone https://github.com/beeper/barcelonacd barcelonamake mautrix-macoscp ~/barcelona/Build/macOS/Build/Products/Release/barcelona-mautrix ~/src/barcelona-mautrix/sudo cp ~/barcelona/com.apple.security.xpc.plist /Library/Preferences/This step is done on the Mac. First, browse to https://mau.dev/mautrix/imessage/pipelines?scope=branches&page=1. Download the latest (i.e., first on the list) build from the master branch, with the appropriate architecture. If you don't know, download the one that says build universal:archive. Unzip it.
~/src/mautrix-imessage/, and rename example-config.yaml to config.yaml.config.yaml.
homeserver: section, change address: to point to your Synapse server. Change websocket_proxy to ws://localhost:29331. Change domain: to the domain of your Synapse server. Set ping_interval_seconds to 10.imessage: section, change platform: to mac-nosip and imessage_rest_path: to /Users/<you>/src/barcelona-mautrix/barcelona-mautrix, where <you> is your username on the Mac.bridge: section, change user: to your user. Change login_shared_secret: to the value of matrix_synapse_ext_password_provider_shared_secret_auth_shared_secret: in your Ansible vars.yaml file.bridge -> encryption, change allow: to true, and default: to truecd ~/src/mautrix-imessage/, followed by ./mautrix-imessage -g. This will generate registration.yaml in that directory. Edit that file.registration.yaml, change url: to http://<zerotier_ip>:29331, where <zerotier_ip> is the IP address of your Mac in the ZeroTier network.mkdir -p /matrix/mautrix-imessage/confignano /matrix/mautrix-imessage/config/registration.yamlregistration.yaml from your Mac.Compiled binaries for macOS aren't available for download for wsproxy, so you'll need to compile it yourself. To do this, first go to https://go.dev and download (and install) Go for macOS. Then:
cd ~git clone https://github.com/mautrix/wsproxycd wsproxygo build -o mautrix-wsproxymv mautrix-wsproxy ~/src/mautrix-wsproxycp example-config.yaml ~/src/mautrix-wsproxy/config.yamlconfig.yaml
listen_address: to 0.0.0.0:29331as with the value of as_token from registration.yamlhs with the value of hs_token from registration.yamlhs: lineThese steps need to be taken on whatever machine you're using to run the Ansible playbook. First, edit vars.yaml, and add the following to the end:
# App service registration file for mautrix-imessage
matrix_synapse_container_extra_arguments:
- '--mount type=bind,src=/matrix/mautrix-imessage/config/registration.yaml,dst=/matrix-mautrix-imessage-registration.yaml,ro'
matrix_synapse_app_service_config_files:
- /matrix-mautrix-imessage-registration.yaml
Then, re-run the playbook with ansible-playbook -i inventory/hosts setup.yml --tags=setup-all,start.
Once that completes, test it out quickly. Back on the Mac, open two terminal windows. In the first, run ~/src/mautrix-wsproxy/mautrix-wsproxy. In the second, run ~/src/mautrix-imessage/mautrix-imessage. If the latter starts up successfully, press Ctrl-C to terminate each of them.
Back on the Mac, create ~/mautrix-imessage.plist. Its contents should be:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.github.mautrix-imessage</string>
<key>WorkingDirectory</key>
<string>/Users/<you>/src/mautrix-imessage</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>./mautrix-imessage</string>
<string>--config</string>
<string>config.yaml</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
<key>KeepAlive</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>
...where <you> is your username on the Mac. Then create ~/mautrix-wsproxy.plist. Its contents should be:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.github.mautrix-wsproxy</string>
<key>WorkingDirectory</key>
<string>/Users/<you>/src/mautrix-wsproxy</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>./mautrix-wsproxy</string>
<string>-config</string>
<string>config.yaml</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
<key>KeepAlive</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>
Then, at your favorite terminal:
mkdir ~/Library/LaunchAgentscp ~/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/launchctl load mautrix-wsproxy.plistlaunchctl load mautrix-imessage.plistLog in to your homeserver using whatever client app you like, and send a message to @imessagebot:example.com, where example.com is the domain of your homeserver.
The bridge stores its log files in ~/src/mautrix-imessage/logs by default, and has no apparent mechanism for rotating, trimming, or otherwise limiting them. However, they can readily be broken up.
From the terminal on the macOS system, run EDITOR=nano crontab -e (if you happen to like vi, you can omit the EDITOR=nano part). Enter the following line:
1 0 * * * launchctl stop com.github.mautrix-imessage && launchctl start com.github.mautrix-imessage
This will restart the bridge every morning at 12:01 AM, creating a new log file with the appropriate date.
Once you're sure the bridge is working properly, you can reduce the log level by editing ~/src/mautrix-imessage/config.yaml. Near the end of that file, in the logging: section, set print_level to info or warn to reduce the verbosity of the log file.