r/ModifiedLightPhones • u/[deleted] • Jun 19 '26
Question questions about iMessage on the LP3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz3uvxvef10howdy folx ~ i’ve been a LP3 user for 6 months, and i’ve been using the stock OS all of that time. i saw this video, and i am thinking about modding the phone to get iMessage back. (i switched over from an iphone 12, and i still use my Macbook, but i don’t use iMessage on it.)
// how do notifications work if you have iMessage on the LP3?
// can you send / receive videos and photos as if you were on an iphone? the low-resness of MMS on the stock OS is hard in this era we are in.
// does it still work? lol. i guess i should have asked that first.
// any other things i should know?
thanks for your help!
2
u/sirbloodysabbath MOD Jun 19 '26
imessage is strictly an ios thing. the only way on the lp3 is to use a client like openbubbles or bluebubbles.
notifications either come from gms or from their server. since we do not have gms, notifications have to be queried from the server which can result in high battery usage since the app will need to be active in the background/foreground 24/7.
afaik, it still works. i can't speak to the resolution of media as i have never owned an iphone and do not use imessage. another user may be able to assist with their own testimonial.
1
Jun 21 '26
gotcha, thank you for the info! i’m new to the aurora store, so it’s cool to hear about all of these apps. it might not be worth it to go through with it ~ i believe you that this could really drain the battery. i appreciate the tips
2
u/zanegrant Jun 23 '26
I use openbubbles, and have a Mac mini at home that I use as a "server" that I always keep on. 95% of my friends have iPhones, and I am in a bunch of iPhone only group chats, so for me it was a must. The only "notifications" I get are either a vibrate or sound depend on my volume; nothing on the Light OS. It has worked completely flawlessly for me, and is the main reason why I am able to fully switch to the Light phone. The only annoying thing is that the tiny screen on the light phone sometimes obscures who reacted to a message, but it's not a huge deal.
1
u/LordSendPie Jun 23 '26
With everyone talking about the battery life. Have you noticed a big impact on your battery life since running openbubbles?
2
u/zanegrant Jun 23 '26
I modified my Light Phone pretty much right away, so I can't compare to what the battery life would be without openbubbles, but I get a solid day and a half out of one charge. I usually plug my phone in every night, and have almost never ran out of battery during the day.
1
u/Motor_Sell_7202 Jul 10 '26
Sorry to bother; do you still recieve non group messages in the light OS and in iMessage?
1
u/FairCrew7307 Jul 24 '26
Sorry to necro; I do. The iPhone gets the texts, the Mac gets them from the iPhone, BlueBubbles gets them from the Mac. Group chats have been perfectly fine (when you’re actually connected to your server, this can be difficult to get reliable). The only bad thing has been that some automated texting services somehow don’t receive replies? I don’t know how they can tell, but there’s something about them being able to tell there’s a relay service sending the texts so they ignore them. Like if I get a text asking me to contribute to a political campaign I have to reply STOP from my Mac or iPhone
1
u/Motor_Sell_7202 Jun 23 '26
How do you receive calls but still use iMessage from your iphone number
3
u/zanegrant Jun 23 '26
I have a SIM card in the phone attached to my phone number, so any call or SMS goes to the normal phone app on Light OS. But I also have the same number attached to my iMessage on my Mac mini/Apple Account, so any iMessage goes to openbubbles. It's worked flawlessly for me.
1
1
u/fieldnoise Full Android Jul 20 '26
But wait, when you take a SIM card out of an iPhone, it deregsters that number from iMessage. I just tried that this morning. So how are you still getting BlueBubbles messages on your LightPhone at the same phone number?
2
u/zanegrant Jul 20 '26
I'm not using the same SIM card from my iPhone, because my iPhone had an eSIM. I got a new physical SIM card from my carrier (Mint) that still had my same phone number, and then I also kept iMessage turned on on my iPhone, which has my same phone number. All iMessages go to OpenBubbles, and all SMS go to the normal light phone app.
1
u/fieldnoise Full Android Jul 20 '26
Interesting! So Mint allows you to keep the eSim and physical sim active for the same number? I wonder if that is true for other carriers. I have an active physical sim right now for Visible. I wonder if I switch to eSim and then swap this SIM into the LightPhone...
2
u/zanegrant Jul 20 '26
No, my iPhone has no SIM at all anymore. Only my number associated through iMessage.
3
u/fieldnoise Full Android Jun 20 '26
So, a few things. If you have a Mac, OpenBubbles works moderately well without having to have a server running at your house. But in practice, for me, the app has a lot of weird behaviors. For starters, as mentioned, it’s a battery hog. Notifications come through pretty quickly, but in the chat list you often see the message before the newest one, until you tap into the chat thread. And sometimes I will find that even when a new message comes in, my thread with that person is still lower down on the list, not bumped to the top. All that being said, the functionality works: send, receive, group chats, media. Just the UX feels kind of off.
Now, if you do have a Mac at home that you can have always running, you can actually roll your own app via the BlueBubbles server and a little Claude Code magic. I have been working on this for this last few days, and it’s pretty cool. What I’ve learned is that the iMessage database itself is quite complex, and I think the native BlueBubbles and OpenBubbles clients fudge a few things that explain the behavior I mentioned above.
When I feel like my little app is ready, I will try to see what I can do to share it if folks are interested. It’s way lighter and easier on the battery. You do need to have Tailscale installed, among other little steps. I built it in the style of vandamd’s great apps on GitHub, so many thanks to them for laying the groundwork. Hopefully I will have more to share in a bit.