Binary Documentation

The imessage-exporter binary exports iMessage data to txt or html formats. It can also run diagnostics to find problems with the iMessage database.

Installation

There are several ways to install this software.

Cargo (recommended)

This binary is available on crates.io.

cargo install imessage-exporter is the best way to install the app for normal use.

Prebuilt Binaries

The releases page provides prebuilt binaries for both Apple Silicon and Intel-based Macs.

Installing manually

• clone the repository
• cd to the repository
• cargo run --release to compile

How To Use

-d, --diagnostics
        Print diagnostic information and exit

-f, --format <txt, html>
        Specify a single file format to export messages into

-n, --no-copy
        Do not copy attachments, instead reference them in-place

-p, --db-path <path/to/chat.db>
        Specify a custom path for the iMessage database file
        If omitted, the default directory is ~/Library/Messages/chat.db

-o, --export-path <path/to/save/files>
        Specify a custom directory for outputting exported data
        If omitted, the default directory is ~/imessage_export

-s, --start-date <YYYY-MM-DD>
        The start date filter. Only messages sent on or after this date will be included

-e, --end-date <YYYY-MM-DD>
        The end date filter. Only messages sent before this date will be included

-l, --no-lazy
        Do not include `loading="lazy"` in HTML export `img` tags
        This will make pages load slower but PDF generation work

-h, --help
        Print help information

-V, --version
        Print version information

Examples

Export as html and copy attachments from the default iMessage Database location to your home directory:

% imessage-exporter -f html

Export as txt from the default iMessage Database location to a new folder in the current working directory called output:

% imessage-exporter -f txt -o output

Export as html from /Volumes/external/chat.db to /Volumes/external/export without copying attachments:

% imessage-exporter -f html --no-copy -p /Volumes/external/chat.db -o /Volumes/external/export

Export messages from 2020-01-01 to 2020-12-31 as txt the default iMessage Database location to ~/export-2020:

% imessage-exporter -f txt -o ~/export-2020 -s 2020-01-01 -e 2021-01-01

Features

Click here for a full list of features.

Caveats

HTML Exports

In HTML exports in Safari, when referencing files in-place, you must permit Safari to read from the local file system in the Develop menu:

Further, since the files are stored in ~/Library, you will need to grant your browser Full Disk Access in System Settings.

PDF Exports

I could not get PDF export to work in a reasonable way. The best way for a user to do this is to follow the steps above for Safari and print to PDF.

wkhtmltopdf

wkhtmltopdf refuses to render local images, even with the flag enabled like so:

let mut process = Command::new("wkhtmltopdf")
.args(&vec![
    "--enable-local-file-access".to_string(),
    html_path,
    pdf_path.to_string_lossy().to_string(),
])
.spawn()
.unwrap();

This persisted after granting cargo, imessage-exporter, and wkhtmltopdf Full Disk Access permissions as well as after copying files to the same directory as the HTML file.

Browser Automation

There are several chomedriver wrappers for Rust. The ones that use async make this binary too large (over 10mb) and have too many dependencies. The sync implementation in the headless-chrome crate works, but times out when generating large PDFs, even with an extreme timeout.