14 releases (3 stable)
1.2.0 | Feb 25, 2023 |
---|---|
1.1.0 | Feb 4, 2023 |
1.0.0 | Jan 15, 2023 |
0.1.9 | Jan 13, 2023 |
0.0.0 | Dec 24, 2022 |
#160 in Command line utilities
372 downloads per month
1.5MB
6.5K
SLoC
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 repositorycd
to the repositorycargo 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 PDF
s, even with an extreme timeout.
Dependencies
~30MB
~553K SLoC