How to Send an iMessage From Command Line

By  on  

As somewhat of a recluse, believe me when I say that text messages, instant messenger, and iMessage have relieved me of loads of anxiety and wasted time with short, meaningless voice chat. It's been a decade since these communication types have become popular so we've moved on from appreciate these technologies to trying to optimize them.

My family and friends are deep into the Apple ecosystem so I frequently receive texts via iMessage (or Message on Mac); at the same time, I'm within a Mac terminal much of my day,. At this point, it's a bit of a hardship (poor me!) to even open the Messages app, and I'd prefer to send messages via command line.

To send a message via command line, you can type the following:

osascript -e 'tell application "Messages" to send "DWB and MooTools FTW!" to buddy "David Walsh"'

I'd recommend creating an alias for this command, which would accept a user and a message.

Command line wins are amazing time savers. Finding a way to accomplish tasks with your usual workflow will make you infinitely more efficient!

Recent Features

  • By
    JavaScript Promise API

    While synchronous code is easier to follow and debug, async is generally better for performance and flexibility. Why "hold up the show" when you can trigger numerous requests at once and then handle them when each is ready?  Promises are becoming a big part of the JavaScript world...

  • By
    Conquering Impostor Syndrome

    Two years ago I documented my struggles with Imposter Syndrome and the response was immense.  I received messages of support and commiseration from new web developers, veteran engineers, and even persons of all experience levels in other professions.  I've even caught myself reading the post...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Select Dropdowns, MooTools, and CSS Print

    I know I've harped on this over and over again but it's important to enhance pages for print. You can do some things using simple CSS but today's post features MooTools and jQuery. We'll be taking the options of a SELECT element and generating...

  • By
    PHP / MooTools 1.2 Accordion Helper

    The MooTools Accordion plugin seems to be the plugin that people seem to have the most problems with. It's an awesome plugin, so I can see why so many people want to use it, but I think that may be part of the problem.

Discussion

    Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!