Forwarding Text Messages From iPhone To Android with ntfy

In this page I documented how I set up forwarding text messages from my iPhone to my Android device using ntfy.

Get Started

1. Install ntfy app on Android device.

2. Subscribe to a topic, e.g., my-topic.

3. Save this shortcut to your iPhone.

4. In the above shortcut, fill in the topic that you are subscribing to. Note that by default everyone can read/send messages for this topic.

5. Set up an automation on your iPhone to run the shortcut when you receive a new text message. Remember to select Run Immediately for automation.

   Tip

   You can also throw in some if/elses if you want to only forward some specific messages.

Self Hosting

I opted for self hosting with docker compose on my Ubuntu remote server. I used nginx proxy manager for proxy and access tokens via Bearer auth for authentication.

1. Set up the following docker-compose file and run docker compose up -d.

   docker-compose.yml

   version: '3'
   services:
   ntfy:
       image: binwiederhier/ntfy
       restart: unless-stopped
       environment:
       TZ: Asia/Shanghai
       NTFY_BASE_URL: <your-domain>
       NTFY_CACHE_FILE: /var/lib/ntfy/cache.db
       NTFY_AUTH_FILE: /var/lib/ntfy/auth.db
       NTFY_AUTH_DEFAULT_ACCESS: deny-all
       NTFY_BEHIND_PROXY: true
       NTFY_ATTACHMENT_CACHE_DIR: /var/lib/ntfy/attachments
       NTFY_ENABLE_LOGIN: true
       volumes:
       - ./:/var/lib/ntfy
       ports:
       - <your-port>:80
       command: serve

   Note

   Remember to configure DNS records for your domain on your DNS provider and open the port for your server.

2. Creat a user and a token with the following commands.

   ntfy user add --role=admin jack  # Add admin user jack
   ntfy token add jack              # Create token for user jack which never expires

   For more commands check out ntfy doc.

   Information

   You need to run these commands inside the docker container. Use docker exec -it ntfy-ntfy-1 /bin/sh.

3. On your Android ntfy app, go to Settings -> Users, add the user that you created earlier. Subscribe to the topic but this time with the self-host base url.

4. On your iPhone shortcut, adjust the base url accordingly. Add a new header for the bearer token with Authorization: Bearer <your-token>