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AsamK
signal-cli
Java2015–2026
AsamK / signal-cli

signal-cli

signal-cli provides an unofficial commandline, JSON-RPC and dbus interface for the Signal messenger.

Command LineData & DatabasesCommunication & Social
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
28Distinct people
39Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
5KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

signal-cli provides an unofficial commandline, JSON-RPC and dbus interface for the Signal messenger.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 3:38:16 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year39 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2015-12-03 10:24:19 UTC to 2026-08-10 19:55:12 UTC.

0510152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20152016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 2 submissions, 0 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 1 submissions, 2 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 15 mentions; 1 submissions, 14 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC220
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC312
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC15114
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

4 sources
cyphar·May 12, 2019
I've been switching people to Matrix recently, mainly because they have a solution for losing your chat history (you don't, at least not with the new key backup system) and there's a lot of other features like bridging and federation. Matrix is far from perfect at the moment but I feel that it will end up being a much more complete solution than Signal (the new seven-word key verification system is really cool and much better than how verification works for Signal). > Not both. Why? I don’t know. But Signal insists that it is more secure. It's because the provisioning support is only implemented in the JavaScript "SDK" (in scare-quotes because we all know Moxie is very hostile to users using apps other than the one they publish). Not only that, there were PRs that implemented the core functionality required and Moxie effectively said that
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the author was too inexperienced for the patch to even be worth reviewing[1]. There are third-party signal clients[2] which use that patch to allow for you to create "virtual devices" in your shell and thus (in theory) script signal chats or create Matrix bridges (I hope to do the latter at some point). [1]: https://github.com/signalapp/libsignal-service-java/pull/21 [2]: https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli
In Signal, a fast, secure and simple messenger endorsed by Snowden
cyphar·Feb 19, 2019
Moxie has been very anti-federation when it comes to Signal for a few years[0] (while I disagree with his reasons, he is right that having a centralised system does make it easier to make protocol changes without splintering your user-base). There is a Signal bridge[1], but it's incredibly hacky (it does some ungodly things with JavaScript to re-use the Signal Chrome App) and requires you to register Signal for a device and then use the linked device configuration to get messages. Personally that's far from ideal, and I think a better solution would be to actually set up a full-on fake device with signal-cli[2] (an unofficial wrapper around the Signal Java library) and then forward things. Unfortunately, Signal bridges would necessarily have to man-in-the-middle your messages (breaking a lot of the benefits of the Signal crypto). You coul
Read the rest
d forward the messages to an encrypted chat, but you still have a fairly big issue -- especially for shared homeservers. So you'd probably need to run your own homeserver and then you get into a lot more fun. [0]: https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37 [1]: https://github.com/matrix-hacks/matrix-puppet-signal [2]: https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli
In Implementing End-To-End Encryption in Matrix Clients

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