Text yourself from the command line.
pingme "take out the trash"
long_running_job && pingme "job finished"
echo "piped message" | pingme
Same behavior as the original pingme — your message arrives as a real SMS — but the AWS stack (API Gateway → Lambda → SNS) is replaced by a single POST to Textbelt, which owns the carrier plumbing:
pingme (bash + curl) ──> textbelt.com ──> carrier ──SMS──> your phone
# your number, E.164 format
mkdir -p ~/.config/pingme && echo +15551234567 > ~/.config/pingme/phone
# or: export PINGME_PHONE=+15551234567
# put it on your PATH
ln -s ~/pingme/bin/pingme /usr/local/bin/pingme
pingme "hello"The default uses Textbelt's shared free key: 1 SMS per day. For more, buy a key at textbelt.com (pay per message, no monthly fee, no number registration) and:
export TEXTBELT_KEY=yourkeyFree unlimited SMS no longer exists: AT&T shut down its email-to-text gateway in June 2025, Verizon's is being phased out, and US carriers now require registered origination numbers (10DLC/toll-free) for app-sent SMS. Reviving the old SNS approach would mean buying a number, filing a verification, and waiting on carrier approval. Textbelt did all of that already and resells it per message.