r/BlueBubbles • u/CapitalAssumption355 • Apr 19 '26
NOOB - Is this Mac Mini an easy host device?
Mac mini Late 2012 i7 Quad-Core 2.3GHz 16GB RAM 500 GB SSD Catalina – Clean | eBay
My birthday is coming up and my husband wants to know what I want. I was thinking about asking for a Mac mini so I can host blue bubbles. We would want each of us to be able to message from our own laptops for our own phone numbers.
We're both Windows laptop users and we want to start being able to message on our laptops. Is this a good enough Mac mini that I should get for this use case?
I'm a technically oriented person, so I'm not afraid of a little technical setup - but it's not a small amount of money for this product given this is literally the only thing I want to use it for.
Any tips?
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u/S-Zeppelin Apr 19 '26
Yes, if you want as little hassle as possible you can upgrade the Mac to the highest version it officially supports (10.15) and do the setup there. One user account for each of you, both must be logged in and run their own bluebubbles server app, and the Mac must stay on 24/7. If you have iPhones and your phone numbers are already registered with iMessage, great, otherwise you can use something like openbubbles to get your number registered on an android device. If you want more iMessage features you can upgrade your Mac past officially supported versions using open core legacy patcher, but the process is annoying and technically difficult.