HACKER Q&A
📣 MrWiffles

Any way to use Keybase without installing their app? (macOS)


I have a need every few months to receive a short message or config file from somebody via Keybase for work purposes. Thing is, I'd rather not install their app for a lot of reasons, biggest of those being I simply have no trust in Zoom or Keybase whatsoever. It's bloated, it's unmaintained since the Zoom acquisition, and I have no guarantees that the published source code is actually what they release to the public. There's also mention in the readme's on github[1] of "privileged tasks" being run; I see no reason they need any privileged access at all, which further erodes any credibility they might have had in my mind.

I can't get others to switch (I've tried) and I have no choice but to use it somehow, so I'm trying to find a way to use the keybase CLI, some alternative client should it exist, or some other (preferably not VM based) install method for these infrequent one-offs, but I'm not having much luck with my search results. I'd rather void using a VM for this (seems like it shouldn't be necessary and it's a huge system resource drain for something so small) but will resort to that if there's just no other option.

So can anyone recommend an alternative installation method or client that lets me use actual real keybase.io without having to run their bloated, untrustworthy abandonware? Thanks for your help.

EDIT: I don't see any way to use the website to get messages sent to me or files for some reason. Don't know if that's an org setting or something, or an app-only feature for some reason.

1: https://github.com/keybase/client/tree/master/osx

  👤 selfhoster11 Accepted Answer ✓
It doesn't look like there are any third-party libraries, so running this in a VM or a container will be unavoidable. This does include a CLI, so you'll be able to service some use cases without launching the GUI.

If your frequency of usage is only once every few months, then create a VM, install the minimum version of the OS (Linux is pretty small) and maybe experiment with how much you can reduce the RAM usage. Once you've used the VM, compress it into an xz archive and put it on a shelf somewhere - whether it's a cloud drive, a USB thumb drive, or whatever. When you need it again, restore the image, do whatever you need, and put it back on the shelf when you're done.

Ultimately, any "clever" solution is gonna go to waste, especially because you need to spend time to come up with a solution. Is your time something you want to give to Keybase? If not, then suck up the cost of maybe 30 gigs worth of storage off in a corner of your SSD/office desk, and maybe a few times of discomfort a year when you need to run with a reduced amount of RAM. It's a small amount of resources compared to your time, and doing it by brute force is cheap these days.