textoter

Sends text messages (SMS) from your mobile phone. The mobile phone is connected via Bluetooth. It is written as an alternative to the phone's proprietary interface.

Features

• Use Bluetooth
• Import contacts from phone
• Contact name completion
• Notification on message status

Installing Textoter

Dependencies

Textoter is a Gnome application, written in Python. It uses bluez stack /via/ DBus. The contacts are parsed using vobject. To detect phone capabilities, textoter uses sdptool from bluez package.

Install

First you may need to install dependencies, for instance on Debian derivatives:

apt-get install bluez gnome-bluetooth python3-vobject python3-gi

And then textoter:

pip install textoter

User interface

To be detected by Textoter, your phone should have been connected at least one time with the computer using the GNOME's Bluetooth interface.

Starting Textoter

From GNOME Shell, start to type in the search bar textoter and click when it appears.

From command line launch Textoter with:

textoter

Phone selection

On startup Textoter detects the available phones and list them in Devices. Select the phone from this drop-down list.

Recipient

To define the recipient, either:

• type directly the phone number in the To : field, preferrably in international format +123456789
• Use phone's contacts

For the latter:

• load the phone contacts by clicking on the phone icon-button. Depending on your phone settigs, you may have to confirm that the computer can access phone's contacts.
• select in the drop-down list the contact. You can also type the contact name and Textoter will propose a list of possible completions.

Message

Type the message in the text area under Message.

Send

Click on the Send button. Textoter then transmit the message to the phone. Depending on your phone, you will have to confirm that the computer can access phone messages.

Quit

Click on Quit button. Textoter then save the current phone and exits. On subsequent launch, textoter will reuse the last phone selected.

Contributing

Bug can be reported on GitHub

Credits

Written by Arnaud Gardelein, using code configuration from oscopy.