BlueFerry Bridges Linux to iPhone Messaging via Standard Bluetooth
An open-source utility lets Linux send and receive iPhone messages without a Mac or Apple ID relay, relying on built-in Bluetooth profiles instead of reverse engineering.
Developer Erik Woodring has released BlueFerry, an open-source tool that lets a Linux computer exchange iMessage and SMS texts with a paired iPhone over Bluetooth. Unlike past workarounds, it does not rely on cloud servers, an intermediate Mac, or signing into an Apple ID.
Instead of emulating Apple's proprietary chat protocol, BlueFerry uses standard services that iOS already exposes to connected hardware like automotive infotainment systems. Outgoing text is packed into standard Message Access Profile (MAP) packets and handed off to the phone through BlueZ and OBEX. The iPhone itself decides whether to deliver the dispatch as an iMessage or a cellular SMS; the sender cannot force the transmission path from the desktop.
The system also taps PBAP to pull contacts as vCards and the Apple Notification Center Service (ANCS) over Bluetooth Low Energy to capture incoming notifications. Because MAP does not supply conversation threads or group member rosters, BlueFerry stitches group chats together by matching incoming text payloads with ANCS notification events.
On the desktop side, a local daemon handles contacts, message history, and the Bluetooth link, surfacing control over D-Bus to clients written for GNOME, KDE, Quickshell, or terminal interfaces. By default, stored messages and address books are encrypted using AES-256-GCM with keys stored in the desktop Secret Service, and local storage can be disabled entirely. BlueFerry only logs messages passing through the link while connected; it cannot pull older chat history from the phone.
Trade-offs are substantial: the tool does not support multimedia attachments, emoji reactions, typing indicators, calls, or FaceTime. The project was verified on an iPhone running iOS 26.5 paired with an Arch Linux machine using Intel AX210 and MediaTek MT7922 wireless chips. Woodring published the code under the GPL-2.0-only license, cautioning that future Apple firmware updates could alter or restrict these Bluetooth hooks.
Source: habr
Repository: GitHub
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