🗃️ wacli — WhatsApp CLI: sync, search, send

A scriptable WhatsApp client built on whatsmeow. Pairs as a linked WhatsApp Web device, mirrors your messages into a local SQLite store, and gives you offline search, sending, and chat/group/contact management from the command line.

Third-party tool. Uses the WhatsApp Web protocol via whatsmeow. Not affiliated with WhatsApp.

Full documentation: https://wacli.sh

Features

• Auth + sync — QR pairing, one-shot or follow-mode sync, optional media downloads, optional signed webhook fan-out.
• Offline message store — SQLite with FTS5 search (LIKE fallback), filterable by chat, sender, direction, time, and media type.
• Sending — text with mentions/replies/link-previews, files (image/video/audio/document, ≤100 MiB), stickers, voice notes, reactions; rapid-send guardrails and retry-receipt grace.
• History backfill — best-effort per-chat requests to your primary device for older messages.
• Contacts / chats / groups / channels — search, alias, tag, archive, pin, mute, mark-read, rename, prune, manage participants and invite links, send to channels.
• Diagnostics + safety — doctor, read-only mode, store locks with owner reporting, panic recovery, bounded media queue, owner-only DB perms.
• Scriptable — --json everywhere, --events NDJSON lifecycle stream, deterministic exit codes.

Install

Homebrew (recommended)

brew install steipete/tap/wacli

If a Linux install reports Binary was compiled with 'CGO_ENABLED=0', run brew update && brew reinstall steipete/tap/wacli.

Build from source

wacli uses go-sqlite3, so cgo + a C compiler are required.

• macOS: Xcode Command Line Tools.
• Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt install build-essential.

CGO_ENABLED=1 go build -tags sqlite_fts5 -o ./dist/wacli ./cmd/wacli
./dist/wacli --help

Quick start

# 1. Pair (shows QR), then bootstrap sync
wacli auth

# 2. Keep syncing in the background (no QR; needs prior auth)
wacli sync --follow

# 3. Search
wacli messages search "meeting"

# 4. Send
wacli send text --to 1234567890 --message "hello"
wacli send file --to mom --file ./pic.jpg --caption "hi"

# 5. Diagnostics
wacli doctor

Recipients accept a JID, phone number (E.164 or formatted), channel JID, or a synced contact/group/chat name. Ambiguous names prompt in a TTY; pass --pick N in scripts.

More recipes — replies, mentions, stickers, voice, reactions, channels, history backfill, chat management — live in the docs.

Documentation

Area	Pages
Setup	overview · auth · sync · doctor
Messaging	messages · send · media · presence
Address book	contacts · chats · groups · channels
History	history coverage / fill / backfill
Local store	store · companion integrations
Misc	profile · version · completion · release

Configuration

Default store: ~/.local/state/wacli on Linux, ~/.wacli elsewhere. Existing ~/.wacli directories on Linux keep working.

Global flags: --store DIR, --json, --events, --full, --timeout DUR, --lock-wait DUR, --read-only.

Environment overrides:

Variable	Effect
WACLI_STORE_DIR	Default store directory.
WACLI_READONLY	1/true/yes/on enables read-only mode.
WACLI_DEVICE_LABEL	Linked-device label shown in WhatsApp. Defaults to wacli - <OS> (<host>).
WACLI_DEVICE_PLATFORM	Linked-device platform. Defaults to DESKTOP; invalid values fall back to CHROME.
WACLI_SYNC_MAX_MESSAGES	Stop sync once total local messages exceed this count.
WACLI_SYNC_MAX_DB_SIZE	Stop sync once wacli.db + sidecars reach a size like 500MB or 2GB.

Backfilling older history

wacli sync only stores what WhatsApp Web sends opportunistically. To fetch older messages, wacli issues on-demand history requests to your primary device (your phone), which must be online.

• Best-effort: WhatsApp may not return full history.
• One request anchors on the oldest locally stored message in that chat — run sync first.
• Recommended --count 50 per request (max 500). Max --requests 100 per run.
• history coverage shows which chats are eligible. history fill --dry-run plans without connecting.

wacli history coverage --include-blocked
wacli history fill --dry-run --kind group --limit 20
wacli history backfill --chat 1234567890@s.whatsapp.net --requests 10 --count 50

Loop over every known chat:

wacli --json chats list --limit 100000 \
  | jq -r '.data[].JID' \
  | while read -r jid; do
      wacli history backfill --chat "$jid" --requests 3 --count 50
    done

Credits

Heavily inspired by whatsapp-cli by Vicente Reig.

Maintainers

• Created by @steipete
• Currently maintained by @dinakars777

License

See LICENSE.