scli

scli is a simple terminal user interface for Signal. It uses signal-cli or optionally signald and urwid.

Installation

Firstly, you need to install signal-cli. Follow the guide provided in the README. The instructions for signald are similar, except you don't need the next step.
For DBUS and daemon support, install the libmatthew-java library, commonly found packaged under the names libunixsocket-java (Debian/Ubuntu) or libmatthew-unix-java (Arch Linux) from your package manager if you have not installed it yet. (If on Arch you installed signal-cli from AUR, you can skip this step.)
Install urwid. You can install it trough your distributions package manager (search for python3-urwid or python-urwid) or you can use pip to install: pip3 install urwid.

Linking your device and using

scli does not provide anything for registering/linking, you need to do this using signal-cli or signald.

For linking your computer follow these steps (for registering a new number, see README of signal-cli or that of signald)

Run signal-cli link -n "DEVICE_NAME". (DEVICE_NAME is just an alias for your computer. You can skip -n "DEVICE_NAME part. Without that, your devices alias will be just cli.)
This will output tsdevice:/... URI (Do not terminate this command, it needs to be alive during linking process. Continue in a separate terminal.). Copy the URI and create a QR code with it using qrencode (or any other QR code generator of your choice):

qrencode 'LINK' -o qrcode.png

Open Signal application on your phone and scan the QR code you just generated.
Run signal-cli -u PHONE_NUMBER receive. This is required to fetch your contacts for the first time. For signald this step is not required. Note: PHONE_NUMBER starts with + followed by the country code.
Now you can start using:

scli

For signald, you need one of these TOOLs to be installed: socat or netcat (the OpenBSD version). After starting up signald, run:

scli --signald TOOL

Usage

A simple two-paned interface is provided. Left pane contains the contact list and the right pane contains the conversation. You can switch focus between panes by hitting Tab (or Shift + Tab). Hitting tab for the first time focuses the conversation, hitting it again focuses to input line. So the tab order is Contacts -> Conversation -> Input, you can use Shift + Tab for cycling backwards.

Keys

Use j/k or the cursor keys to go down/up in contacts list or in messages.
Hitting enter on a contact starts conversation and focuses to input line.
Hitting l on a contact only starts conversation.
Hitting o on a message opens the URL if there is one, if not it opens the attachment if there is one.
Hitting enter on a message opens the attachment if there is one, if not it opens the URL if there is one.
Hitting y on a message puts it into system clipboard. (needs xclip)
g focuses first contact/message.
G focuses last contact/message.
d deletes the message from your screen (and from your history, if history is enabled).
i show a popup that contains detailed information about the message.
u in contacts list unfocusses the currently active conversation (if any)
+ or insert in the contact list allows to add new contacts.

Commands

There are some basic commands that you can use. Hit : to enter command mode (or simply focus the beginning of the input line and type :). You can abort the command mode by hitting Backspace at the beginning or ESC anywhere.

:quit or :q simply quits the program.
:openUrl or :u opens last URL in messages, if there is one.
:openAttach or :o opens last attachment in messages, if there is one.
:attach FILE_PATH MSG or :a FILE_PATH MSG attaches the file under the given path to message. The message is optional and FILE_PATH is shell-escaped, e.g. :a 'this file' will attach this file (including white-space).
:attachClip or :c attaches clipboard content to message. This command tries to detect clipboard content. If clipboard contains something with the mime-type image/png or image/jpg, simply attaches the image to message. If clipboard contains text/uri-list it attaches all the files in that URI list to your message. This command needs xclip installed.
:toggleNotifications or :n toggles desktop notifications.
:edit or :e lets you edit your message in your $EDITOR.
:toggleAutohide or :h toggles autohide property of the contacts pane.

Examples:

:attach ~/cute_dog.png check out this cute dog!
:attachclip here is another picture.

Note: Commands are case insensitive, :quit and :qUiT does the same thing.

Searching

There is a built-in search feature. Simply hit / (or focus the input line then type /) and start typing, the chat will be filtered out based on your input. You can focus any of the search results and hit enter (or l) to open that result in full conversation. As with the command mode, Backspace at the beginning of the input line or ESC anywhere will stop the search mode and put you back into message editing.

Configuration

There are some simple configuration options. You can either pass them as command-line arguments or add them to your configuration file. Run scli --help to see options. Configuration file syntax is also pretty easy. Lines starting with # and empty lines are ignored, other lines should consist key=value pairs.

Example

scli -u +1234567890 --enable-notifications=true

Configuration file equivalent of this command is:

# Long option forms are used in config file. (u=+123... is not valid.)
username=+1234567890
enable-notifications=true

fbrausse/scli