iMessage to Friend

[eay]

Hello everyone,

 

I finally updated my Alfred v1 extension "iMessage to Friend" to support v2.

 

 

"iMessage to Friend" allows you to directly write and send a message to a friend from within Alfred. Just hit Alfred’s hotkey, enter your friends (nick)name, write a message, hit enter and you’re done. No more clicking and application switching required. Answering your friends’ texts won't take you out of your work anymore.

 

The setup is a little bit tricky, but there are detailed setup instructions on my blog, where you will also find the download.

 

Download & Setup Instructions: http://eay.li/alfred2imessage

 

I hope you'll enjoy it!

 

Greetings from Cologne, Germany

Stefan

[tschoof]

This is great, thanks! Any possibiltiy to add a function for group chats? Or a way to make the syntax accept them?

[eay]

Thanks, tschoof!

 

Group chats are a great idea!

 

What follows is a technical explanation why they aren't possible right now (sorry!):

 

The problem is: iMessage's AppleScript support isn't documented at all, but after some Google research, it looks like iMessage's handle for group chats gets generated automatically (something like "chat354574422665" <- random number), while the handle for a single user is his phone number or email address. I hoped that it's just some kind of array ("012345,678910" or "012345+5678910"), but it's not. I extracted the group chat number from iMessage's SQL database and tried it as the new recipient, but that didn't work either. Although the text will be linked to the right group chat iMessage reports that "chat354574422665" isn't a valid iMessage address.

 

I really like the idea of group chats and I'm watching out for a workaround. If anybody has any idea how to solve this, please contact me.

[jesselperry]

Not sure how possible it would be, but I think it would be awesome to add this as a contact action on phone numbers & email addresses. That way you could quickly message anyone through their contact card in Alfred.

[mikeconqueso]

Excellent workflow! Thanks for sharing!

[fddc]

hmm... must be doing something wrong.

workflow works for me but sends to 2 recipients both the intended and also the 1st listed contact in the Messages app.

can anyone help?

[eay]

hmm... must be doing something wrong.

workflow works for me but sends to 2 recipients both the intended and also the 1st listed contact in the Messages app.

can anyone help?

 

Strange. Do you have more than one iCloud account enabled in iMessage? This causes problems. Also, if your iCloud account isn’t the first account in iMessage’s account list, you could try to change this:

 

 

Maybe this will help. Otherwise feel free to email me a screenshot: eay /at/ eay /dot/ cc

[tschoof]

Hey there, sorry don't wanna disencourage you, but this workflow seems to do the same with less config hassle, right?

[mymonkeyballs]

Hey, seems like a great workflow and would love to use it, but for some reason i cannot get it to work. Ive tried everything and read the instructions. I live in Canada, any insight on what may be the problem, any help would be greatly appreciated thanks!

[austinmann]

Hey, 

 

Thanks for making this. I love the idea of this workflow and it seems to work just fine (i get the notification that says it sends) but nothing goes through.  I am trying to message a US number…  country code (1) prefix (212) number (9024556).  (see attached) 

 

Am I filling in the number wrong? 

 

In iMessage I've put the icloud account at the top of the list… I only have one icloud  account enabled, too. 

 

Thanks in advance! 

 

screen shot here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/fe96ghpe7bh54lq/Screen%20Shot%202013-12-22%20at%203.56.26%20AM.jpg

[gcagora]

I've used this workflow multiple times per day, every day for years and years. It is great! 

 

But now it doesn't work with Big Sur. Any ideas on how to get it going again? TIA