Features
- Conversations — messages grouped by number (“+1…” and “8…” forms of one number are one conversation), newest first, with unread counters; letters for alphanumeric senders.
- Chat — bubbles grouped by day, time and delivery state (“sending…”, “not sent”); opening a conversation marks it as read.
- New message — to any number, from the round button.
- Delete a conversation — with confirmation.
- Phone and wide layouts — on a narrow screen a stack “conversations → chat” with Back/Esc, in a wide window two columns.
- Network line — says when sending is impossible (no modem, airplane mode) or messages will wait for the network.
- 14 languages — follows the system language.
| Chat | Wide window |
|---|---|
 |
 |
Requirements
SMS are sent, received and stored by synmodemd, the synshell modem daemon (Qualcomm modems over QMI/QRTR); long messages arrive already joined. Without a modem the app shows “Modem unavailable”.
Install
Arch Linux (AUR) — x86_64 and aarch64. synsms is part of the synshell-mobile package (phone shell, modem, calls, NFC, compass, step counter):
yay -S synshell-mobile-bin # prebuilt
yay -S synshell-mobile-git # built from source
Depends on synshell-core. From source: cargo build --release -p syn-sms in the synshell repository.
Command line
synsms # conversations
synsms --chat +15550142 # open the conversation with a number
synsms --new # new message
synsms --screenshot out.png --chat "+1 555 0142" # window snapshot with a made-up conversation
Part of synshell
synsms is one of the applications of synshell — a Wayland desktop environment in Rust for computers and phones, built on the syngui UI framework.
License
GPL-3.0-only