iMessage on Windows and Beyond

I've been trying Microsoft Phone Link and Intel Unison on my Windows PC (which I daily drive) in an attempt to get around not having iMessage on Windows. I switched to an iPhone in September 2022 with the release of the iPhone 14 Pro Max, so all this time I had been used to Google Messages being available in my browser. Long story short, neither of these apps work very well—the bluetooth syncing between my PC and iPhone were destroying the battery life, group messages were getting botched, and any messages not sent from my PC wouldn't show up in the chat later. I also just acquired a Boox Palma 2, and I had this wild idea that I could maybe get less screentime on my iPhone over the weekend if I enabled a few extra things on my Palma, like iMessage and email for when I need it.

I had a few old MacBook Pros sitting in a drawer and a completely non-functional Late 2016 Mac Pro (oh yeah, the trash can). The MacBooks would probably do an a-okay job—they were fully loaded older variants with some good umpphh behind them. But it didn't feel... safe to just keep an old MacBook plugged up 24/7 in clamshell mode while shoved in a shelf with an old ass battery.

With a quick Google, I found that I needed something that ran at least High Sierra (10.13) for BlueBubbles and I began my hunt for a 2011 Mac Mini on Facebook Marketplace. I quickly found one for $100 with 16GB of memoryhttps://bluebubbles.app/. These originally shipped with macOS Lion and officially topped out at macOS High Sierra, so it was perfect—or so I thought.

Wouldn't you know it, as soon as I launched BlueBubbles I got an error. I quickly jumped into their Discord and did a quick search for the error message and lo and behold, they had ditched High Sierra support in 2024. But thanks to OpenCore Legacy Patcher and a few quick searches around stability, I was able to push this Mac Mini all the way to macOS Ventura (13.6)

So what was the point of all of this, you ask? BlueBubbles.

Why BlueBubbles?

Okay, so, BlueBubbles is an open-source project that allows you to use iMessage on non-Apple devices—Android, Windows, Linux, and my Boox Palma 2 e-reader (because it runs on Android). But BlueBubbles requires a Mac to act as a bridge for iMessage, and that’s where this 2011 Mac Mini comes in. The goal was simple:

• Get the Mac Mini running a modern enough version of macOS to install and configure BlueBubbles.
• Set up remote access so I could maintain the machine without needing to plug in a monitor, keyboard, or mouse.
• Establish a stable BlueBubbles server to push iMessage to my other devices.

Installing macOS Ventura on a 2011 Mac Mini with OpenCore Legacy Patcher

The 2011 Mac Mini officially supports macOS High Sierra (10.13) as its last update, but High Sierra is ancient at this point. BlueBubbles requires at least macOS Mojave (10.14), but I wanted to future-proof things just a bit—so I aimed for Ventura.

Preparing OpenCore Legacy Patcher

OpenCore Legacy Patcher is a bootloader that enables macOS to run on unsupported hardware. Here’s how I set it up:

1. Downloaded OCLP from the official GitHub repository.
2. Created a bootable macOS Ventura installer using a USB drive and the macOS Installer within OCLP.
3. Rebooted, held Option, which brought up my boot drives. Selected the new OpenCore bootable installer we made on the USB drive.
4. And.... installed Ventura!

The installation itself went surprisingly smoothly. I hit an error one time, rebooted right back in as I had previously and it finished as expected. After the first boot, I ran OpenCore Legacy Patcher again to apply post-install root patches (essential to get graphics, Wi-Fi, and other hardware components working on most models).

Setting Up BlueBubbles

Once Ventura was running smoothly, installing BlueBubbles was pretty straightforward:

1. Downloaded the latest BlueBubbles server app.
2. Enabled iMessage in my iCloud account on the Mac Mini.
3. Followed the BlueBubbles setup instructions, which were straight forward. I just connected my Google account, which automatically set up my Firebase instance, and then I selected Cloudflare for my server.

Remote Access

I wanted to set up remote access so I wouldn’t need to keep a monitor connected to the Mac Mini. My first thought was to use Parsec—it’s fast, low-latency, handles input well, and I use it on my Windows PC already—but I couldn't get Parsec to work properly. When I attempted to connect, it was just a black screen.

Switching to Chrome Remote Desktop

After some troubleshooting, I abandoned Parsec and went with Chrome Remote Desktop instead:

1. Installed Edge and the Chrome Remote Desktop extension on the Mac Mini.
2. Enabled remote access using my Google account.
3. Configured the Mac Mini to stay awake at all times.

The Chrome solution is higher latency than Parsec, but for the light maintenance I need to do (mostly restarting the BlueBubbles server when needed), it’s more than sufficient.

BlueBubbles Across Devices

Now that my BlueBubbles server was working on macOS, getting the client going on my Windows PC and Palma were a breeze.

1. Installed the BlueBubbles Android client on the Boox straight from the Play Store and the BlueBubbles Windows client from the Microsoft Store.
2. I signed in with my Google account to automatically import my server details.
3. Voilà, iMessage instantly working on my Palma and PC.

The Palma’s e-ink screen makes it less than ideal for heavy texting, but it works perfectly for quick message checks and notifications. One of my goals is to disconnect from my phone a little more on the weekends, so this is an easy way to just be able to check messages when I need to throughout the day with my Palma while my phone is sitting around in the dining room—I'll write a post about this in a few weeks after I've had time to really dive into the practicality of this.

Final Thoughts

Apple keeps iMessage locked down to its ecosystem, but projects like BlueBubbles show that it’s possible to work around those walls—with the right mix of persistence, open-source software, and a willingness to tinker, that is. It’s pretty wild that a 14-year-old Mac Mini can still serve a critical role in my setup in 2025—all thanks to OpenCore and the magic of open-source projects like BlueBubbles. iMessage on Windows and Boox? Mission accomplished.