iMessage
Connect iMessage by running a BlueBubbles server on a Mac you own — the highest-setup channel in CoPhrase, and an unofficial one.
Apple provides no API for sending or receiving iMessage from a server. There is no official route, from anyone.
The way iMessage automation works — for CoPhrase and for every other platform that offers it — is to run a Mac that is signed into your Apple ID, with software on it that reads and sends messages through the Messages app. CoPhrase uses BlueBubbles, an open-source server for exactly this, running on your Mac.
This is unofficial, and it requires hardware you keep running
iMessage is not an official Apple integration. It works by driving the Messages app on a real Mac signed into your Apple ID.
What that means concretely:
- You need a Mac. Yours, in your office or a Mac you rent — it stays on, awake, online, and signed in. If it sleeps, dies, or loses network, the channel is down.
- Your Apple ID is in the loop. Apple does not sanction this, and it can enforce against accounts it considers abusive. The risk lands on your Apple ID, not on CoPhrase.
- This is the highest-effort channel in the product, by a wide margin. Every other channel is a QR scan, an OAuth click, or a script tag.
If iMessage isn't a channel your customers actually use to reach you, skip it. If it is, go in with your eyes open.
What you need
| A Mac | Kept powered on, awake, and online. A Mac mini is the usual choice |
| An Apple ID | Signed into Messages on that Mac. Use a business Apple ID, not a personal one |
| A network path in | A tunnel so CoPhrase can reach the BlueBubbles server running on your Mac |
Setup
Prepare the Mac
Sign into Messages with the Apple ID that owns the phone number or email address your customers message. Disable sleep — a sleeping Mac is a dead channel.
Install BlueBubbles
BlueBubbles is open-source software you install on the Mac. It exposes the Mac's Messages database and send capability over a local server, protected by a password you set.
Grant it the macOS permissions it asks for (full disk access and automation permissions for Messages). Without them it can read nothing and send nothing.
Expose it to CoPhrase
BlueBubbles needs to be reachable from CoPhrase. That means a tunnel from the Mac out to the internet — BlueBubbles supports this directly, rather than requiring you to open ports on your office router.
Connect it in CoPhrase
Add an iMessage channel, point it at your BlueBubbles server, and authenticate with the password you set. Pick which agent answers.
Capabilities
| Official API | No |
| Risk | Lands on your Apple ID |
| Dependency | A Mac you run, always on |
| Inbound media | Images, files, and audio messages (voice notes) — read and transcribed for the agent |
| Green bubbles | Messages to non-Apple devices fall back to SMS via the Mac, with SMS's limitations |
Things to know
Your Mac is a single point of failure. If it reboots and doesn't log back in, if the tunnel drops, if macOS updates overnight — the channel is silently down. CoPhrase monitors the connection and alerts you when it stops seeing messages, because a quiet channel and a broken channel look identical otherwise.
Replies you send from your own iPhone pause the AI. CoPhrase sees messages sent from your Apple ID's other devices. An unmatched outbound message — one CoPhrase didn't send — is treated as a human stepping in, and the agent backs off that thread. See Handoff.
Send carefully. The same posture that governs WhatsApp Web applies here: sane sending limits, no blasting, no cold outreach. The account risk is the same shape.
iMessage ships late. It's in the final channel wave — highest setup cost, narrowest demand.