Wacli – WhatsApp CLI: Sync, Search, Send

A WhatsApp CLI built on top of whatsmeow, supporting best-effort sync of message history locally, offline search, message sending, and contact/group management.

• Uses the WhatsApp Web protocol, with no official affiliation with WhatsApp.
• Currently has the core implementation built out, with the full design documented in docs/spec.md.
• The 0.2.0 update added display text for reactions, replies, and media types in search/listings, allows overriding the display name with --filename when sending files, and lets you change linked device info via the WACLI_DEVICE_LABEL and WACLI_DEVICE_PLATFORM environment variables.

There are two installation methods.

• Homebrew tap: brew install steipete/tap/wacli
• Local build: go build -tags sqlite_fts5 -o ./dist/wacli ./cmd/wacli

The default storage path is ~/.wacli, which can be changed with --store DIR. Login is done via wacli auth, scanning a QR code to perform initial sync, and afterward wacli sync --follow continues syncing without a QR code. Search is handled with wacli messages search, sending with wacli send text and wacli send file, and group management with wacli groups list and wacli groups rename.

To fetch more historical messages, use history backfill. However, this feature is best-effort, so full history is not guaranteed, the primary device (phone) must be online, it operates per-chat, and the recommended --count is 50.

The project's latest release is v0.6.0 (2026-04-14), and it's a practical open-source CLI tool worth checking out on HN.