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Beeper Bridge Manager

A tool for running self-hosted bridges with the Beeper Matrix server.

The primary use case is running custom/3rd-party bridges with Beeper. You can connect any^† spec-compliant Matrix application service to your Beeper account without having to self-host a whole Matrix homeserver. Note that if you run 3rd party bridges that don't support end-to-bridge encryption, message contents will be visible to Beeper servers.

_{†caveat: hungryserv does not implement the entire Matrix client-server API, so it's possible some bridges won't work - you can report such cases in the self-hosting support room linked below or in GitHub issues here}

You can also self-host the official bridges for maximum security using this tool (so that message re-encryption happens on a machine you control rather than on Beeper servers).

[!NOTE] Self-hosted bridges are not entitled to the usual level of customer support on Beeper. If you need help with self-hosting bridges using this tool, please join #self-hosting:beeper.com instead of asking in your support room.

Usage

1. Download the latest binary from GitHub releases or actions.
   • Alternatively, you can build it yourself by cloning the repo and running ./build.sh. Building requires Go 1.22 or higher.
   • bbctl supports amd64 and arm64 on Linux and macOS. Windows is not supported natively, please use WSL.
2. Log into your Beeper account with bbctl login.

Then continue with one of the sections below, depending on whether you want to run an official Beeper bridge or a 3rd party bridge.

Official bridges

For Python bridges, you must install Python 3 with the venv module with your OS package manager. For example, sudo apt install python3 python3-venv on Debian-based distros. The Python version built into macOS may be new enough, or you can get the latest version via brew. The minimum Python version varies by bridge, but if you use the latest Debian or Ubuntu LTS, it should be new enough.

Some bridges require ffmpeg for converting media (e.g. when sending gifs), so you should also install that with your OS package manager (sudo apt install ffmpeg on Debian or brew install ffmpeg on macOS).

After installing relevant dependencies:

3. Run bbctl run <name> to run the bridge.
   • <name> should start with sh- and consist of a-z, 0-9 and -.
   • If <name> contains the bridge type, it will be automatically detected. Otherwise pass the type with --type <type>.
   • See the table below for supported official bridges.
   • The bridge will be installed to ~/.local/share/bbctl. You can change the directory in the config file at ~/.config/bbctl.json.
4. For now, you'll have to configure the bridge by sending a DM to the bridge bot (@<name>bot:beeper.local). Configuring self-hosted bridges through the chat networks dialog will be available in the future. Spaces and starting chats are also not yet available, although you can start chats using the pm command with the bridge bot.

There is currently a bug in Beeper Desktop that causes it to create encrypted DMs even if the recipient doesn't support it. This means that for non-e2ee- capable bridges like Heisenbridge, you'll have to create the DM with the bridge bot in another Matrix client, or using the create group chat button in Beeper Desktop.

Currently the bridge will run in foreground, so you'll have to keep bbctl run active somewhere (tmux is a good option). In the future, a service mode will be added where the bridge is registered as a systemd or launchd service to be started automatically by the OS.

Official bridge list

When using bbctl run or bbctl config and the provided <name> contains one of the identifiers (second column) listed below, bbctl will automatically guess that type. A substring match is sufficient, e.g. sh-mywhatsappbridge will match whatsapp. The first listed identifier is the "primary" one that can be used with the --type flag.

3rd party bridges

3. Run bbctl register <name> to generate an appservice registration file.
   • <name> is a short name for the bridge (a-z, 0-9, -). The name should start with sh-. The bridge user ID namespace will be @<name>_.+:beeper.local and the bridge bot will be @<name>bot:beeper.local.
4. Now you can configure and run the bridge by following the bridge's own documentation.
5. Modify the registration file to point at where the bridge will listen locally (e.g. url: http://localhost:8080), then run bbctl proxy -r registration.yaml to start the proxy.
   • The proxy will connect to the Beeper server using a websocket and push received events to the bridge via HTTP. Since the HTTP requests are all on localhost, you don't need port forwarding or TLS certificates.

Note that the homeserver URL is not guaranteed to be stable forever, it has changed in the past, and it may change again in the future.

You can use --json with register to get the whole response as JSON instead of registration YAML and pretty-printed extra details. This may be useful if you want to automate fetching the homeserver URL.

Deleting bridges

If you don't want a self-hosted bridge anymore, you can delete it using bbctl delete <name>. Deleting a bridge will permanently erase all traces of it from the Beeper servers (e.g. any rooms and ghost users it created). For official bridges, it will also delete the local data directory with the bridge config, database and python virtualenv (if applicable).