Make signal messenger database from backup readable

Just a personal project to make old messages available after change to Apple iPhone. It is not possible to migrate Signal conversations from Android to iOS.

Python 3.10 required.

Use https://github.com/mossblaser/signal_for_android_decryption to decrypt signal backup into a folder.

Use this script to make database and attachments viewable.

Example usage:

git clone https://github.com/n8falke/signal_db_to_text.git
cd signal_db_to_text
# first check content
python signal_db_to_text.py ../decrypted_backup/database.sqlite
mkdir ../out # target directory for "text"-files
python signal_db_to_text.py ../decrypted_backup/database.sqlite ../out

Select conversions to export

With (python) regular expressions you can limit conversations to export. Without specifying the output directory you can preview the message selection.

With i.e. --skip "Name|Other|Signal" you can exclude all full names matching the expression case sensitive. Use quotes with | or . Matches are marked with - in message overview.

With i.e. --only Familyname you can limit the exports to only matches. Matches are marked with * in message overview.

Combine --skip to exclude from --only matches.

Output formats and limit file size

Supported --formats are:

• html (default)
• md i.e. for Nextcloud (gets slow on longer conversations and no images in app)
• csv ;-separated utf-8 file (use --bom on Windows) attachments only as link

For each conversation a file (or more with --max and/or --split) is written with full name of contact and start (or end of conversation with --reversed).

When attachments are in the conversation, they are copied into a folder attachments/contact_name in the output directory. Disable attachments with --attachments "".

With i.e. --max 100 limits the messages in one file. After 100 messages a new file will be created after finishing the current day. So one day is not borken into more than one file.

The option --split year creates a new file each year.

Both options can be combined.

Specifics to md

Becaus nextcloud does not support line breaks insiede a table cell, one message is broken into multiple rows on line breaks. This lines do not have an extra timestamp and contact name.

Options overview

Option	Description
--max MAX	Maximum number of messages in a file
--split SPLIT	Split conversation files by month/year/day
--log LEVEL	Set log level
--only ONLY	Export only matching regex
--skip SKIP	Do not export matching regex
-f/--format format	Output as md/csv/html
--attachments dir	Directory with attachments from backup
-r, --reversed	Start with last message
--bom	Write bom into file