Extracting WhatsApp Messages from an iOS Backup
yasoob.me
yasoob.me
It’s a paid piece of software, not free, but it’s worth the price imo.
I use it mainly for transferring photos from my iPhone to my MacBook Pro M1.
But I know that iMazing can back up WhatsApp messages as well, among other features.
https://imazing.com/guides/export-and-print-whatsapp-chats-f...
This caught me by surprise; I'm not sure if you're aware, but you can open up Image Capture (built-in Mac app) to import photos from your iPhone. Obviously iMazing can do other things as well, but just in case.
Are new iPhones really doing usb 2 over usb-c?
I expect most people import 100G if they have the cheapest model (128G flash), but the rest are importing 200G or more.
Firstly, they may not have a laptop. Secondly, I expect many more of those who have one will sync photos from their phone to iCloud and from iCloud to their laptop then directly from their phone to their laptop.
Yes, for large archives, that costs money ($10 a month gets you 2TB if iCloud storage), but I guess/think the convenience and having almost direct backups in case you lose your phone are worth it for most people who want to do such copying.
If so, it _is_ an edge case.
For perspective.. I remember downloading and installing Linux off floppies. That sucked too, especially with bad disks or download errors, but it was less frustrating than this.
It seems like they don't improve it because iCloud seems like it works smoothly, and they get an on-going profit stream out of it. The process was so brutal I almost broke down and paid for a ton of iCloud storage.. but didn't because getting lots of photos out of iCloud is also painful.
I don’t use that feature as much anymore as I’m all in on iCloud now, but it worked fine when I last did it about a year ago.
Do you have any suggestions for this?
Give it a try and see how it goes?
It’s a subscription software, so I signed up for 1 month, did the migration, and then cancelled my account.
I used it, it's a very slow, very nerve wracking experience, but it works.
You MUST have fully charged phones before you start!! And they need good battery life, since there's no way to charge them while it works.
See here for some comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/whatsapp/comments/qo1wfc/the_curren...
It’s buggy, you have to fire up Xcode to run it, and on top of that I had To manually do some corrections in the SQLite database before the script ran without errors lol. But it did work (though it screwed up message orders lightly).
You could try looking through this posts on reddit which details a few options for this: https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/qkq7f2/the_current_sta...
[0]:https://www.backuptrans.com/android-iphone-whatsapp-transfer...
You’ll need to also use https://github.com/YuvrajRaghuvanshiS/WhatsApp-Key-Database-... which makes the process easier than it used to be - no need for an android emulator or second rooted phone
What you’re paying for with Backuptrans is mostly the conversion between database formats, I’m not aware of an open source solution to that. The extracting/decrypting/viewing of android messages and editing iPhone backups can all be done with other tools
Nice! To be clear, you can't count on the same thing happening on the other end of the connection due to various alternative Signal clients. This is kind of where Snapchat is king of the hill, but obviously nothing is perfect!
Snapchat APK can be modded, with root one can make screenshots and videos (I believe it is how some revenche porn is made). There's also analog screenshots (photos), and the end point (smartphone) can be hacked e.g. contain malware.
In my M.O. I assume the end point is not compromised and is honest; otherwise, whatever I write can be traced back to me.
Best thing would be not saying it, but if you were to make a good setup it wouldn't involve Android or iOS but something like Tails. And yet, we know deployed military in Ukraine don't use such. But what they do is better than analogue Russian on 8900 MHz.
Android is becoming worse every year.
And by the way you can screenshot in a browser.
You wouldn't want to risk being non-compliance when a breach happens would you?
But for app developers there are a lot of reasons they might want to do that. Disappearing messaging apps like Snapchat, ticket QR code displaying apps, stock footage apps, ebooks, and more.
It's just that Google has decided that that second group of people actually owns your phone, not you.
Not being able to take a screenshot is more of a side effect of that, but is arguably the main reason for most apps to use them in practice.
It's also been around for many years.
This is horrible in itself.
[0] https://github.com/YuriCosta/WhatsApp-GD-Extractor-Multithre...
[1] https://github.com/ElDavoo/WhatsApp-Crypt14-Crypt15-Decrypte...
[2] https://github.com/ElDavoo/WhatsApp-Crypt14-Crypt15-Decrypte...
What I mean is: your chat partners could archive your chats or some man in the middle. Better to know what you wrote, then to be blindsided later by somebody else who got hold of these archives.
It's a wild throwback. Even though it is mostly mindless chatter, it is nice to have.
It's definitely a shame that there was no common/interoperable format for locally stored IM history, like there is with emails.
As for SMS texts, they could be backed up at least on later Symbian OSs, with the Nokia Ovi desktop app. On Android, backup apps would be able to do it as well.
At least in theory, EU directives for data portability (the "takeout" feature) should grant access to the message history for any abiding platform.
I think all chat platforms should have the decency to offer an export option, regardless of the underlying protocol.
Recollecting my message history from all sources into a common database is definitely high up in my project backlog.
The iOS backup was corrupted and I had to start over again at the time. The Whatsapp file was extracted but I never got round to it. ( Along with important pictures inside the Whatsapp)
To this day I still blame on it on iOS backup problem. Which is still a thing in 2022.
I wonder why Facebook hasn't made an iOS to Android Whatsapp history transfer a priority. To most people outside of US, Whatsapp history transfer is the biggest lock in with the Smartphone ecosystem.
There is no official way to switch from Android to iOS, and the reverse is only possible for some newer Samsung phones.
I think WhatsApp should be fined heavily for not providing the portability that the GDPR requires them to provide.
Yes, (on iOS) you can export your settings and each individual chat, but IMO they should have a one-click solution.
(I think their argument for not having to provide it is that WhatsApp messages are stored on each user’s phone, not on their servers, but IMO, they still are inside WhatsApp’s realm. Certainly, on iOS you cannot open them in any other way than to the WhatsApp app)