sigtop

sigtop is a utility to export messages, attachments and other data from Signal Desktop.

For example, the following two commands export all messages to the messages directory and all attachments to the attachments directory:

sigtop export-messages messages
sigtop export-attachments attachments

Documentation is available in the sigtop.1 manual page. You can also read it online.

Installing on Unix

First install Go (version 1.18 or later) and a C compiler. On systems other than OpenBSD, you also need to install libsecret and pkg-config.

On Ubuntu 22.04 or later, you can run the following command to install the required packages:

sudo apt install gcc golang libsecret-1-dev pkg-config

Then, to install sigtop, run:

go install github.com/tbvdm/sigtop@master

This command installs a sigtop binary in ~/go/bin. You can choose another installation directory by setting the GOBIN environment variable. For example, to install sigtop in ~/bin, run:

GOBIN=~/bin go install github.com/tbvdm/sigtop@master

If you prefer, you can install sigtop without libsecret support by specifying the no_libsecret build tag:

go install -tags no_libsecret github.com/tbvdm/sigtop@master

Installing on macOS

First install Homebrew. Then, to install sigtop, run:

brew install --HEAD tbvdm/tap/sigtop

Later, if you want to update sigtop, run:

brew upgrade --fetch-HEAD sigtop

Installing on Windows

There are several ways to get sigtop on Windows.

Note that sigtop is a command-line program; it should be run in a PowerShell or Command Prompt window.

Downloading a pre-compiled binary

You can download a pre-compiled Windows binary from the latest release.

Building from source

First install Go. Next, install the C compiler from WinLibs: download this Zip archive and unzip it to C:\winlibs.

Then, to install sigtop, open a PowerShell window and run:

$env:cc = 'c:\winlibs\mingw64\bin\gcc'
go install github.com/tbvdm/sigtop@master

This command installs sigtop.exe in C:\Users\<username>\go\bin. This directory has been added to your PATH, so you can simply type sigtop in PowerShell to run sigtop.

Cross-compiling in WSL

If you have installed WSL, you may find it simpler to cross-compile. For example, if you are running Ubuntu (22.04 or later) in WSL:

sudo apt install golang gcc-mingw-w64-x86-64
GOOS=windows GOARCH=amd64 CGO_ENABLED=1 CC=x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc go install github.com/tbvdm/sigtop@master

This command installs sigtop.exe in ~/go/bin/windows_amd64. You can move the binary to another location if you wish. For example:

mv ~/go/bin/windows_amd64/sigtop.exe /mnt/c/Users/Alice

Reporting problems

Please report bugs and other problems with sigtop. You can open an issue on GitHub or send an email.