Sideband <img align="right" src="https://img.shields.io/badge/License-CC%20BY--NC--SA%204.0-lightgrey.svg"/>

This repository is a public mirror. All development is happening elsewhere.

To understand the foundational philosophy and goals of this system, read the Zen of Reticulum.

Sideband is an extensible LXMF messaging and LXST telephony client, situational awareness tracker and remote control and monitoring system for Android, Linux, macOS and Windows. It allows you to communicate with other people or LXMF-compatible systems over Reticulum networks using LoRa, Packet Radio, WiFi, I2P, Encrypted QR Paper Messages, or anything else Reticulum supports.

Screenshot

Sideband is completely free, end-to-end encrypted, permission-less, anonymous and infrastructure-less. Sideband uses the peer-to-peer and distributed messaging system LXMF. There is no sign-up, no service providers, no "end-user license agreements", no data theft and no surveillance. You own the system.

This also means that Sideband operates differently than what you might be used to. It does not need a connection to a server on the Internet to function, and you do not have an account anywhere. Please read the Guide section included in the program, to get an understanding of how Sideband differs from other messaging systems.

Functionality & Features

Sideband provides many useful and interesting functions, such as:

Secure and self-sovereign messaging and voice calls using the LXMF and LXST protocols over Reticulum.
Image and file transfers over all supported mediums.
Audio messages that work even over LoRa and radio links, thanks to Codec2 and Opus encoding.
Secure and direct P2P telemetry and location sharing. No third parties or servers ever have your data.
The telemetry system is completely extensible via simple plugins.
Situation display on both online and locally stored offline maps.
Geospatial awareness calculations.
Exchanging messages through encrypted QR-codes on paper, or through messages embedded directly in lxm:// links.
Using Android devices as impromptu Reticulum routers (Transport Instances), for setting up or extending networks easily.
Remote command execution and response engine, with built-in commands, such as ping, signal reports and echo, and full plugin expandability.
Remote telemetry querying, with strong, secure and cryptographically robust authentication and control.
Plugin system that allows you to easily create your own commands, services and telemetry sources.

Sideband is fully compatible with other LXMF clients, such as MeshChat, and Nomad Network. The Nomad Network client also allows you to easily host Propagation Nodes for your LXMF network, and more.

Installation

Sideband can run on most computing devices, but installation methods vary by device type and operating system. For installation instructions, please find the relevant section below.

Android
Linux
Raspberry Pi
MacOS
Windows

On Android

For your Android devices, you can download an APK on the latest release page.

After the application is installed on your Android device, it is also possible to pull updates directly through the Repository section of the application.

The Sideband APK file is always signed with a consistent signing certificate directly at build time. Before installing it for the first time, you can verify that the APK has not been modified, by checking that the APK file's signing certificate matches these hashes:

SHA-256 digest: 1c65f01f586a2b73ac4eb8bf48730b3899d046447185fd9d005685a4af20cdea
SHA-1 digest: 4ab9269c320c72f4e4057ec7ea5acade320c2a48
MD5 digest: 09afff8c505089a544ad2bf371c29422

Sideband will never be released on app store platforms that does not support complete control of the APK signing directly from the developer. If you download Sideband from any other source than this repository, and the certificate hashes do not match, do not install it.

The Android version of Sideband has been carefully set up to not use any Android APIs or functionality that are dependent on Google (or other vendor-specific) components or libraries. It uses only raw Android OS APIs, and accesses them directly, instead of through "compatibility", "support" or "helper" libraries, which can often hijack application data flow into privacy-compromising pipelines controlled by Google or other vendors.

This also means that Sideband is designed to be fully compatible with custom (and more privacy-friendly) Android versions and ROMs, such as GrapheneOS, de-googled devices and other custom ROMs.

On Linux

On all Linux-based operating systems, Sideband is available as a pip/pipx package. You can either pull and install Sideband directly from the pip repository, or download and install locally using whl package from the latest release page.

This installation method includes desktop integration, so that Sideband will show up in your applications menu and launchers. Below are install steps for the most common recent Linux distros. For Debian 11, see the end of this section.

Basic Installation

You will first need to install a few dependencies for voice calls, audio messaging and Codec2 support to work:

# For Debian 13+, Ubuntu 24.04+ and derivatives
sudo apt install python3-pip python3-pyaudio libopusfile0 codec2 xclip xsel

# For Debian 12+, Ubuntu 22.04+ and derivatives
sudo apt install python3-pip python3-pyaudio python3-dev build-essential libopusfile0 portaudio19-dev codec2 xclip xsel

# For Manjaro and derivatives
pamac install python-pyaudio opusfile codec2 xclip xsel

# For Arch and derivatives
sudo pacman -Sy python-pyaudio opusfile codec2 xclip xsel

Once those are installed, install the Sideband application itself:

# Finally, install Sideband using pip:
pip install sbapp --break-system-packages

# If Sideband does not show up in your application menu
# or as an executable command in your terminal, reboot
# your computer.
sudo reboot

After installation, you can now run Sideband in a number of different ways:

# The first time you run Sideband, you will need to do it
# from the terminal, for the application launcher item to
# show up. On some distros you may also need to log out
# and back in again, or simply reboot the machine for the
# application entry to show up in your menu.
sideband

# At the first launch, it will add an application icon
# to your launcher or apps menu. You may need to log out
# of your session, and back in for the application to
# show up in your launcher, depending on your distro.

# You can also run Sideband in headless daemon
# mode, for example as a telemetry collector:
sideband --daemon

# You can also run Sideband with more verbose
# log output enabled:
sideband -v

If you do not already have Reticulum connectivity set up on your computer or local network, you will probably want to edit the Reticulum configuration file at ~/.reticulum/config and add any interfaces you need for connectivity.

Advanced Installation

You can also install Sideband in various alternative ways:

# Install Sideband via pipx instead of pip:
pipx install sbapp

# Or, if you intend to run Sideband in headless
# daemon or console mode, you can also install
# it without any of the normal UI dependencies:
pip install sbapp --no-dependencies

# In the case of using --no-dependencies, you
# will still need to manually install the RNS
# and LXMF dependencies:
pip install rns lxmf

# Dependencies can vary slightly on older OS
# versions, due to different package names.

# Install Sideband on Debian 11 and derivatives:
sudo apt install python3-pip python3-pyaudio python3-dev build-essential libopusfile0 portaudio19-dev codec2 xclip xsel
pip install sbapp

# On Debian 11, run Sideband manually via the
# terminal once to install desktop integration:
python3 -m sbapp.main

On Raspberry Pi

You can install Sideband on all Raspberry Pi models that support 64-bit operating systems, and can run at least Python version 3.11.

The install instructions below assume that you are installing Sideband on 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS (based on Debian 13 "Trixie" or later). If you're running something else on your Pi, you might need to modify some commands slightly.

To install Sideband on Raspberry Pi with full support for voice calls, audio messages and Codec2, follow these steps:

# First of all, install the dependencies required
# for audio processing and voice calls.
#
# On Raspberry Pi OS "Trixie" (based on Debian 13)
# or newer, install these packages:
sudo apt install python3-pyaudio codec2 xclip xsel

# You can now install Sideband
pip install sbapp --break-system-packages

# Restart your Raspberry Pi to ensure the program
# is available in your PATH and application menus:
sudo reboot

# Everything is ready! You can now run Sideband
# from the terminal, or from the application menu:
sideband

If you're using an older version of Raspberry Pi OS, you will need to install these dependencies instead, before installing Sideband:

# Package dependencies for Raspberry Pi OS based
# on Debian 12 Bookworm
sudo apt install python3-pip python3-pyaudio python3-dev python3-cryptography build-essential libopusfile0 libsdl2-dev libavcodec-d

Sideband

Install / Use

README