Took some time off from Nostr and when I came back was surprised that there were still no great options for iOS signers 😞 Android’s had Amber forever. iOS users are stuck raw dogging their nsec or using throwaways, and you never get the full PWA experience because NIP-07 doesn’t work in PWA mode. With all the vibe coding going on, iOS users are not getting the full experience. The reason why a signer doesn’t exist for iOS is that iOS kills backgrounded apps fast, so the usual “signer stays connected” approach doesn’t work. Workarounds like silent audio tracks keep the app alive but are fragile and will probably get flagged by App Store review eventually. I’ve been working on a native iOS signer called Clave to fix this. APNs push wakes a Notification Service Extension for ~30s, which signs with the nsec in the Keychain and goes back to sleep. Key never leaves the device. Push proxy is content-free — can’t read requests, can’t sign anything. What works: • bunker:// and nostrconnect:// pairing (tested on some clients, works great with @YakiHonne and @Nostur • Per-client trust levels with per-kind overrides • Full NIP-46 method set (sign_event, nip04/44 encrypt/decrypt, etc) Heads up: push IS the signer, so notifications can’t be turned off — but I’ve routed them quietly to notification center, no banner spam for every auth. I’m looking for some help at this point. Testers. Use it, break it, tell me what’s confusing and which clients it chokes on. Security review. Custom NIP-44 v2 on CryptoKit + swift-secp256k1. Worth being upfront: I’m not a cryptographer. I used Claude to implement to spec and tested against known vectors, but I want real eyes on it before people trust this with real keys. If you know NIP-44, NIP-46, or iOS Keychain/NSE — please look at Shared/LightCrypto.swift, LightSigner.swift, and the proxy registration flow. Contributors. MIT. Known gaps: multi-relay bunker (proxy only subs to one relay, so bunker clients are pinned to relay.powr.build), self-hosting docs, more client testing. Use a throwaway nsec only for now. Don’t be a hero. Reply or DM if you’re interested in helping for a TestFlight invite — keeping it tight for now so I can make sure the proxy can scale appropriately. Drop in, poke at it, break things, fix them.

Replies (49)

τέχνη's avatar
τέχνη 1 week ago
I have Aegis but yeah the issue of disconnecting makes it 100% useless. Very sad.
Kate Brennan's avatar
Kate Brennan 1 week ago
iOS signer limitations are frustrating, but Apple’s walled garden makes workarounds tough—this is why PWA struggles persist. Meanwhile, the Middle East’s crypto hype faces similar friction between promise and reality, per a recent read. Regulatory and technical roadblocks aren’t unique to Nostr.
Hell yeah man. Great work. I believe the only signers that are working on iOS are Primal and Aegis, but I haven't used either of them personally. It's great to have another well executed app in the space.
frphank's avatar
frphank 1 week ago
> Took some time off from Nostr and when I came back was surprised that there were still no great options for iOS signers 😞 Just use Android?
Not really interested in the tribalism. I just want Nostr to grow. A meaningful chunk of the people already here are on iOS, so they deserve good tools too — and if we want to onboard the next wave of users, a lot of them are gonna be on iOS whether we like it or not. Meeting people where they are beats lecturing them about their phone 🫡
On one side I agree with you, on the other, all the hype and marketing of Apple was about the "exclusive experience" leaving out every one not using their products on the side, to pressure them to stay in. Now it's the chance to exclude them from these great, free, open, experiences to force some of them to leave the cage and break this little circle while freeing people on the way. But Google is turing Android into the same shit than Apple, so unless we all move to a third solution like fully open Linux phones, we are all doomed. So better gather as many to nostr, so at least it can free them up from the centralized network effect. For the rest we will figure it out later.
BTCBaggins's avatar
BTCBaggins 1 week ago
Interesting.... follow on Nostr is a signable event? Once I approved on Clave it worked. Extra friction? Or me being 80IQ?
Everything on Nostr is a signed event… writing a note, liking something (kind 7), changing your relay list, adding/removing a follow, etc. you just didn’t realize your client was signing everything on your behalf with your nsec until now
BTCBaggins's avatar
BTCBaggins 1 week ago
Seems like once you're signed in it should allow auto signing events. Since that's clearly what user (me) expects..
Nice! I’ll check it out again. I was honestly never able to get it to work reliably, and when it was backgrounded I couldn’t sign. Maybe I was doing something wrong? I’ll dm you a TestFlight. Would love some early feedback before I release it more widely.
The only thing that sucks is the $99 developer fee, but other than that I’m free to build anything I want. Private apps against private APIs on nice hardware.
Happy to chat with them. The proxy to Apple push notification setup is a pain to setup but seems to be pretty stable and works when the app it backgrounded. Anyway, the app and proxy are both FOSS on that GitHub link so have at it!
It’s not constantly running. It’s leveraging apples push notification service system to wake up a lightweight signer in a notification service extension. App never has to be opened after setting it up.
Yeah I always have to keep reconnecting it. Plus having to use one Nostr app as a signer for another is retarded. I just want something like amber but on iOS. Aegis does this but I've never been able to get it to work consistently.
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