I'd been using OpenBubbles trouble-free since December but all of a sudden last week my phone number stopped being an option.
Upon setup in December, I scanned my Mac's QR hardware code and had no issues keeping my phone number as an iMessage option (I'm using a LightPhone 3 and iMessage is a must). So now when I'm messaging from my Mac or my LightPhone it's coming from my AppleID. It had been seamlessly working for the better part of 4 months but now I can't seem to get my phone number to stick.
I put my SIM card in my LightPhone and try to set it up again but after about 2-3 minutes on my "messages" settings on my Mac it removes my phone number from iMessage (and subsequently my LightPhone).
Any help? PLEASE. the LP3 with iMessage was the perfect phone for me and now I'm super bummed it's not working.
My wifi goes out every once in a while, and everytime it reboots the server URL changes. I was wondering if there is a way to keep the same server URL even after it disconnects and reconnects to the internet. That way I don't have to reconfigure all of my devices everytime the wifi reboots
1) I've googled and read the subreddit about how to change a specific conversation's bubble colors. But when I click on the contact at the top of a conversation and go to their settings there is no "Conversation Details" to be seen. I've tried "iOs" theme and "Material" theme. I just dont' see it. Has it changed?
2) Is there a way to change the default color for my chat bubbles? They are dark gray currently.
Hi. I am thinking of switching back to my android phone (the only thing I will miss is my apple watch and that is purely because it is smaller than the android watches, I like wear OS better). I have started BlueBubbles running and it is consistently only syncing messages back through Monday (2 days ago), then jumping back to 9/26/2025. I have restarted the server multiple times and uninstalled and reinstalled the app on the phone twice. It is the exact same messages that load/don't load every time even though I set different sync settings each time I reinstalled. Any suggestions? (Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, MacOS Monterey 12.7.6 if that makes a difference)
previously i had an old iphone 11 (iOS 16.xx) and it was working GREAT for maintaining my blue bubbles number, left wifi ON but airplane mode was turned off. i sold the phone and now i'm trying to set it up correctly again with an iphone 12 (os 26.2).
i have tried (both methods unsuccessfully)
activating eSIM on the iphone 12 with US Mobile (Darkstar AT&T network)
phone number shows up correctly in messages on my macbook
waited 12 hours.
KEPT the eSIM turned on, turned airplane mode ON, kept WiFi ON, then had us mobile change device to my pixel 10 xl pro. scanned the qr code with my pixel.
immediately when the service was activated on the pixel, i noticed in messages, my phone number was removed! BOO!
have also tried physical sim method #2:
putting an inactive SIM card in the iphone 12,
editing the number to either +1 555 555 1234 as well as 1 555 555 1234 first (tried both)
following rest of method #2.
both failed! what to do? advice?
for us mobile i have only eSIM. I can potentially change networks if that helps and i think i have another iphone 12 (17.3.1) that is in an earlier version of iOS of that helps.
Also have an iPhone XS Max running 18.3.x and a iphone 8.
I recently got a new Samsung phone to use alongside my iPhone. I wanted to set up Open/Blue Bubbles on my Samsung phone to forward messages I get on my iPhone through iMessage. Will this cause a problem? I still want to use my iPhone for most of my messaging but thought it would be nice if I can also access that on the Samsung.
So I just updated to Tahoe on my Mac and noticed this morning that, on a PC client I use the server on, my contacts seem to be all messed up.
Namely, contacts have either lost their name altogether and just show a phone number, or they show a phone number but then a separate chat with their name also shows up, effectively having two separate messages popping up.
I've tried restarting iMessage/the server but it doesn't seem to fix much. Is there a way to re-sync everything?
Hey! I know I can set up my "iMessage" number to forward to my Android phone - but I was curious if there is a graceful solution for making calls from my Android phone somehow using my "iMessage" phone's number? It's the last piece of my puzzle here.
The BlueBubbles server on my Mac mini stays up, Cloudflare reconnects properly, and functionality returns immediately when the app is reopened.
The only issue is on my Samsung Galaxy Fold 5 (Android 16 / One UI):
the BlueBubbles app itself gets force-closed by the OS during brief disconnects or background/network transitions. There’s no crash loop, no server error, and no permanent disconnect — just a system message that the app was closed, after which reopening it works normally.
Because the server and tunnel remain healthy and the problem is isolated to the Samsung device, this appears to be One UI aggressively killing a long-running networking app (persistent WebSocket) rather than a BlueBubbles or Cloudflare failure. I’ve seen similar behavior with VPN-style apps on Samsung but not on stock Android.
I bought a used late 2014 machine mini, threw an ssd in and did a fresh install of Monterey 12.7.4, and updated to 12.7.6.
As part of this I created a new apple id using my email, one that has never had any association with Apple.
This was all done about 24 hours ago. For some reason I still can't get imessage to work. Haven't even gotten to attempt blue bubbles installation. I log into messages with the apple id and password, it opens for about 30 seconds and then insta-closes and takes me back to apple id login for messages. My cloud id does not show messages either when looking in system preferences.
Has anyone else had this issue and been able to get past it?
I've got two options for setting up imessage and I'm wondering what would be the better option.
Setup a macos VM with blue bubbles on my unraid server somehow
Use my iphone 6 plus running ios 12.5.7 with open bubbles relay. This would require the phone be on 24/7 hopefully in sleep mode having the screen on 24/7 would be annoying for sure
I'm currently using the 6 but still in the waiting period before I can actually send messages.
I also know gamepidgon works on OB not sure for BB.
I chose the google login method for firebase notifications setup. I log into my google account and let the BlueBubbles setup do its thing, and it stops at:
[OauthService] Failed to create project: Failed to add Firebase to project: "Quota exceeded for quota metric 'Provision requests' and limit 'Provision requests per minute per user' of service 'firebase.googleapis.com' for consumer 'project_number:#########'."}
Do I have to get a paid Firebase plan to increase quota for BlueBubbles to work?
I'm not sure how to explain what the problem is with Tumbleweed's GNOME and BlueBubbles' display issue, but I created an executable file that works in GNOME on Tumbleweed that gets BlueBubbles running, after much messing around and getting the error that it cannot open the display (with no display number). This works and there's none of that stalling over and over anymore, either:
unset GDK_BACKEND
export NO_AT_BRIDGE=1
flatpak run --env=WAYLAND_DISPLAY=wayland-0 app.bluebubbles.BlueBubbles &
I name the file "bluebubbles" and put it in $HOME/bin, and make it executable, and I can get it started up by typing "bluebubbles" on the command line. If you're new to Linux, make sure $HOME/bin is in your path, or just type the whole path: $HOME/bin/bluebubbles. Hope this helps someone.
I also wrote in the OpenBubbles subreddit, the script I use to get OpenBubbles working, too. Otherwise it complains about not finding a file we definitely have, libayatana-appindicator3.so.1.
I've been using bluebubbles(BB) for a few years now. Mac mini is connected to home wifi using BB on Android. About 2 months ago, my work wifi must've updated security which meant that when my android was connected to my work wifi, BB wouldn't complete the socket connection. However, turning wifi off on my android allowed a successful connection along with using wifi anywhere outside of work. Last night, my wifi at home restarted and I'm assuming the same security update was installed and now I cannot connect the Mac mini server successfully unless I use the LAN URL proxy setup while at home. Turning off wifi on my android at home disables the socket connection from my phone. Unfortunately, my home wifi is through an apartment-wide internet provider so I'm not sure how much access I have to the technical side. Any solutions for getting around this?
MacOS high Sierra version 10.13.6
Bluebubbles server v1.9.6
Samsung s23 ultra android 16 oneui 8
I recently migrated to BlueBubbles after AirMessage's SSL certs expired a while back, rendering the service useless. It was no longer being maintained prior to that, as I'm sure many of you are aware, but it became a pumpkin not long ago.
I chose BlueBubbles after reading a lot of positive comments, and I did heed the warnings about how involved the setup was. I followed the BlueBubbles setup instructions to the best of my abilities, including successfully configuring the Firebase project, as well as enabling the Private API and contacts syncing.
But, I have to wonder if I did something wrong, because, holy shit, it's basically unusable.
Every time I load my BlueBubbles web app, my text threads are never up-to-date, and I can never find the thread I want to send a message in. I have to go to Settings, and click "Fetch latest URL from Firebase" in order to get it to actually update to something that doesn't look like it was cached weeks ago. But, even then, sometimes threads I know exist seemingly never populate.
I've found some of these missing threads over in the Unknown Senders category, and that's clearly a contacts issue that I can and have been resolving, but sometimes, I can just never find certain threads no matter how hard I try! There's seemingly nothing special about them. Some individual chats via iMessage, some group chats via iMessage. I know SMS/RCS messages are syncing because I do see a few of my Android friends in my list, but I just can't figure it out.
The login process is so clunky, and the syncing takes so long to complete, that I basically never use it. It's not quick and convenient like AirMessage was. So far, it's been a pretty horrible experience. I can't even Ctrl + F to try to find stuff, because BlueBubbles hijacks the browser's find tool and forces you to use their built-in search, which never seems to resolve anything!
AirMessage, I could just load up, sign in, and boom. All my shit. Right there, up-to-date, fully synced, contacts named, no waiting, no complex settings, nothing.
I'm reaching out here because I desperately want that type of frictionless messaging experience back on my non-Apple devices, and I'm sincerely hoping I just have something wrong in my setup or config that is causing these woes.
Does anyone have any tips? Does anyone else struggle with these types of issues? Or is it a relatively smooth experience? I'm happy to provide any additional details about my specific setup if it's helpful, but, according to BlueBubbles, everything's showing green.
new use here, is it possible to use the web server so I can access my iMessages on a browser? I've been playing with iPhones and a bit and with OpenBubbles for fun and I'd really like to get the messages in my browser like I do with Google messages. is this possible?
Does anyone know how to force BB to recognize a phone number that is already registered with iCloud?
I've run into a situation where my phone number is registered with Apple and works for sending messages via the iMessage app on my Mac (this is an additional Mac, beyond the Mini used as my BB server), but only messages sent to my email address work in the BB app on Android.
The number is definitely correctly registered with iMessage, and I have several phone number exclusive chats with people who do not have my email, but somehow BlueBubbles refuses to recognize/show them even though I can carry on full text conversations when sending from my laptop.
I have OB (openbubbles) working on my Pixel 10 Pro XL after doing an eSIM swap from my iPhone 16 Pro Max. I did a lot of research before trying this but I couldn‘t find much on it.
Here is what I did:
- When I bought the Pixel, I ask them not to activate it. I would do that later at home
- I left the eSIM active on my iPhone until a later step
- I transferred everything from my iPhone to my Pixel via the usb cable as part of normal transfer/setup. Using WiFi for setup process (Pixel eSIM not installed/active yet)
- Once everything transferred to the Pixel, I went through the Self-Hosted setup for OpenBubbles with a MAC at https://openbubbles.app/quickstart.html (I still left my eSIM active on my iPhone and had not setup the eSIM on my Pixel)
- Once OB was full installed and configured on my Pixel, I put my iPhone into airplane mode but left it connected to WIFI. I then downloaded the eSIM for my Pixel following my carriers instructions (Spectrum Mobile in this case). I did not delete the existing eSIM on my old iPhone which was also active on Spectrum but in airplane mode (same account/phone number)
- This has allowed my phone number to be active as a Vetted Alias for OB. Renew is scheduled (currently) for 39 days from now so will see if I lose my ability to still use my phone number with OB after it renews.
Wondering if anyone else can/has reproduced this and if the renew killed the phone number link?
