amsg-batch

Overview

amsg-batch is a command-line tool to send bulk texts via Apple Messages on macOS, written in Rust. A friend of mine who runs a business originally asked me to help him send out personalized batches of messages from his iPhone number to clients, which gave birth to this idea.

Due to widespread and well-known difficulties integrating with Apple's API from non-Apple products, this CLI (which relies heavily on AppleScript) only works on macOS; this is a limitation of Apple itself, not the tool's implementation. In the end, it is aimed at those who need to send out bulk texts from iPhone numbers, anyway.

Installation

[TODO: Write here once first release is out and install.sh is finalized]

Basic use

Let us say you wish to send a personalized message to several of your friends via iMessage. Simply create a CSV file (say, recipients.csv) with two columns

Baron von Murderpillow,+1 (234) 567-8910
Rt. Hon. John A. Stymers,314159265
[...]

and a text file (say, message.txt) with contents

Greetings and salutations, my dearest {name}! I doth send to thee a most wondeful message.

(as you can see, the formatting of the phone numbers does not matter, as long as they are valid). Then, assuming you have amsg-batch properly installed, simply run

amsg-batch --recipients recipients.csv --message message.txt --placeholder {name}

which will replace {name} with the names in the CSV file and send the personalized messages to the corresponding phone numbers with a one-second delay between each text.

You may also wish to send non-personalized messages to a list of phone numbers, and perhaps via SMS instead of iMessage. To do this, simply create a CSV file (say, recipients.csv) with a single column

+1 (234) 567-8910
314159265
[...]

and a text file (say, message.txt) with contents

Greetings and salutations, my dearest friend! I doth send to thee a most wondeful message.

then run

amsg-batch --recipients recipients.csv --message message.txt --service SMS

to send the same message to all phone numbers via SMS.

Documentation

To see brief descriptions of all available options, run

amsg-batch -h

(assuming you have amsg-batch properly installed). To see more detailed descriptions and instructions, run

amsg-batch --help

A GitHub Pages site with more extensive documentation generated with cargo doc is forthcoming.