The matrix-whatsapp bridge stopped transferring videos and images a few months ago, and stopped working completely a few weeks ago. It seems that Meta has changed things…

Assumptions

  • Bridge mautrix-whatsapp is installed in it own directory as user synapse
  • System services are controlled using systemd

Preparation

Download the new version of mautrix-whatsapp from [https://github.com/mautrix/whatsapp/releases], using whatever method you can. The bridge is a single executable; I prefer to append the version number to the binary and use a symlink to select between different versions

cd <bridge_dir>
sudo -u synapse mv mautrix-whatsapp-amd64 mautrix-whatsapp-v0.8.6
sudo -u synapse chmod +x mautrix-whatsapp-v0.8.6

Steps

In one shell, start watching the log-output to check for problems during shutdown and restart

cd <bridge_dir>
sudo tail -n 1000 -F logs/bridge.log

In a different shell, watch the service status

watch -n1 systemctl status mautrix-whatsapp

In a third shell, do the open-heart surgery

cd <bridge_dir>
sudo systemctl stop mautrix-whatsapp

sudo -u synapse ln -fs mautrix-whatsapp-amd64-v0.8.6 mautrix-whatsapp

sudo systemctl stop mautrix-whatsapp

###Notes

  • The log-files are not world-readable.
  • The name of the log-file has changed. It might be different in the future.