imessage-exporter

iMessage Exporter 5.0.0: Speckled Clarkia contains the following fixes and improvements:

• New Features
  • Contacts-based conversation merging
    • Combine phone numbers and email addresses belonging to one person, including linked Contacts cards on macOS and iOS
    • Merge conversations split across those addresses, including group chats
    • Preserve separate group chats with different names unless Messages explicitly links them
    • Skip ambiguous identity matches when an address belongs to multiple Contacts cards
  • Allow --contacts-path (-n) to override the Contacts database in encrypted and unencrypted iOS backups
• Performance
  • Read message bodies and edit histories with message rows instead of fetching them separately for each message
  • Parse body data directly from query results, avoiding intermediate buffers in the main decoding path
  • Replace the separate payload-presence query with a flag in the message query
• Bug Fixes
  • Fix inflated poll vote counts when participants change selections or Messages repeats vote updates for #823
  • Fix null values in archived app-message payloads and render links as plain URLs when preview metadata is absent or null for #805
  • Preserve recovered body components and edit history when text recovery fails
  • Keep attachments and handwriting from recovered deleted messages in their conversation’s attachment directory for #827
  • Route messages from linked chat rows without participant records to their conversation instead of the orphaned transcript
  • Fix incorrect contact matches caused by country-code collisions and iOS search-index phone fragments
  • Reject unmatched conversation filters even when date filters are supplied
  • Reject out-of-range handwriting dimensions and handle empty text-rendering canvases
• Enhancements
  • Improve conversation naming and filtering
    • Use one filename and attachment directory for every chat row in a merged conversation
    • Choose consistent contact names and fallback addresses, honoring linked contacts’ preferred names
    • List each participant once and improve long filename truncation and remaining-participant counts
    • Match conversation filters against every Messages address belonging to a grouped participant
  • Clarify diagnostic counts and report participants and conversations merged through Contacts
  • Improve database and backup path errors for #829, #808, #647, #590, #493, and #359
    • Distinguish missing paths, permission failures, invalid SQLite files, and databases without Messages data
    • Suggest database and backup locations based on files found on disk
    • Improve default home-directory resolution, including Windows support
• API Changes
  • Breaking (migration guide)
    • Decode message text, body components, and edit history during row loading; remove separate body-decoding calls
    • Replace callback streaming and generic query/cache traits with prepared-statement iteration and concrete APIs
    • Separate participant identity groups from stored addresses and use those groups for chat deduplication
    • Return decoded timestamps in UTC and accept explicit timezones for date filtering and presentation
    • Separate exported attachment paths and media types from database rows
    • Revise diagnostic fields, error variants, and public module paths
  • Ergonomic
    • Re-export chrono, plist, and rusqlite from imessage_database
• Miscellaneous
  • Exclude test fixtures from the published library package
  • Recommend cargo install --locked
  • Expand regression coverage, consolidate exporter tests, and enforce formatting in CI
  • Update supported-version documentation
  • Bump dependencies and build with latest rustc

⚠️ Version 5.0 include

iMessage Exporter 4.3.0: Shining Willow contains the following fixes and improvements:

• New Features
  • macOS Golden Gate and iOS 27 Support
    • Parse SMS filter categories, including allowed, junk, promotional, and transactional messages, for #790
    • Preserve raw filter subcategory values for downstream crate consumers
    • Parse attachment source attribution, including app name, bundle ID, and App Store ID, for #791
    • Identify drawings created with the Messages drawing board
  • Optional message-derived file timestamps for #785
    • Add --use-message-times to stamp each transcript's creation time from its earliest rendered message and modification time from its latest
    • Set each new attachment file's creation time to its message date on macOS and Windows
    • Leave directories and transcript files without messages unchanged
• Performance
  • Resolve message result-set columns once per query instead of selecting an extraction path and rescanning column names for every row for #792
  • Preserve narrow projections for current schemas and remove redundant joined columns from legacy queries
  • Schema detection is now capability-based
• Bug Fixes
  • Fix preflight attachment disk-space estimates ignoring conversation and date filters for #778
  • Prevent a solo -p invocation that doesn't request diagnostics or exports from decrypting a database just to do nothing
• Enhancements
  • Support reordered and omitted optional columns across Messages database schemas and custom message queries
  • Tapbacks and tapback stickers render in chronological order
  • Diagnostic output now shows detected database schema features
  • Expose chat filtering status for #801
• API Changes
  • Breaking
    • Add filter_action and filter_sub_action fields to Message
    • Message::from_row() now deserializes by column name instead of assuming a fixed positional layout
      • Custom queries must preserve the required rowid, guid, date, is_from_me, num_attachments, and num_replies column names
    • Query methods now take &Capabilities
      • Message::from_guid, stream_rows, get_count, get_replies, get_votes, as_poll
      • Attachment::from_message
  • Ergonomic
    • Add FilterAction with parsing, display, and filtered-category helpers
    • Add Message::filter_action()
    • Add AttachmentAttribution with bundle ID, app name, App Store ID, and drawing-detection helpers
    • Add Attachment::get_attribution()
    • Add tables::capabilities::Capabilities type
      • Capabilities::determine(&Connection) probes a schema once
      • Query construction derives from the result
• Miscellaneous
  • Reorganize message models into focused modules while preserving their public paths
  • Update supported-version documentation
  • Significant new test coverage
  • Bump dependencies
  • Build with latest rustc

iMessage Exporter 4.2.0: Stream Orchid contains the following fixes and improvements:

• New Features
  • Inline sticker rendering for #755 and #756
    • Render Memoji, Genmoji, and custom stickers inline with surrounding message text in HTML exports
    • Scale inline-only sticker and emoji messages like jumbomoji
    • Resolve inline sticker attachments by file-transfer GUID instead of attachment row order
  • Digital Touch rendering for #344
    • Support taps, sketches, kisses, heartbeats, heartbreaks, fireballs, photos, and videos
    • HTML exports now render static Digital Touch frames as embedded SVG on a black 4:5 canvas
    • Photo Digital Touch messages render the photo backdrop with drawing overlays
    • Video Digital Touch messages render as embedded video players
    • TXT exports describe each effect with useful stroke, point, or beat metadata
  • Business Chat messages for #769 and #770
    • Render Quick Replies in HTML and TXT exports
    • Render Interactive Forms, including requests and submitted responses
    • Render List Pickers, including prompts and selected replies
  • Expanded Data Detector support
    • Parse structured currency amounts, postal addresses, package tracking numbers, flights, and unit/timezone conversions from DDScannerResult payloads
    • Preserve structured detector metadata for downstream crate consumers
• Performance (≈+29%)
  • Optimize blob reads and database connection settings
  • Skip immediately discarded queries for tapbacks, poll votes, and poll updates
  • Cache resolved chat filenames
  • Increase base buffered-writer capacity
  • Pre-size date formatting buffers
• Bug Fixes
  • Fix multi-attachment and inline-sticker pairing by matching body ranges to attachment rows by GUID
  • Preserve translated text, original text, and inline stickers in mixed HTML and TXT runs
  • Render edited Memoji / Genmoji history as inline images
  • Fix malformed empty-stroke handling in handwriting messages
  • Fix handwriting SVG file writes
  • Prevent Check In timestamp overflow
  • Add overflow handling to message parsing paths
  • Add plist UID recursion-limit handling
  • Fix index references in event parsing errors
  • Fix currency detection edge cases
  • Fix Digital Touch alpha conversion for SVG/CSS colors
  • Improve Digital Touch media kind matching in HTML exports
  • Remove CSS :has selector usage for broader HTML viewer compatibility
  • Improve resolved-contact percentage calculation
  • Correct busy-bar gating for attachment work
• Enhancements
  • Refactor AttachmentManager into focused planning, target-resolution, mode, and execution modules
  • Reuse existing attachment outputs when rerunning exports against the same destination
  • Refactor temporary encrypted-backup database handling so cleanup happens after SQLite connections close
  • Add table and column existence checks for diagnostics on older database schemas
  • Centralize diagnostic count queries
  • Centralize URL/rich-link metadata handling behind shared helper traits
  • Centralize progress tracking logic
  • Migrate typedstream parsing to crabstep's foundation feature
  • Reorganize text-effect parsing into focused animation, style, and detected-data modules
  • Add dedicated Digital Touch models and SVG render pipeline
  • Add Business Chat parsing and rendering models behind the shared balloon-provider flow
• API Changes
  • Breaking
    • Replace BubbleComponent::Text and BubbleComponent::Attachment with BubbleComponent::Run(Vec<AttributedRange>)
    • Replace TextAttributes with AttributedRange
      • Use AttributedRange::text(...), AttributedRange::attachment(...), or AttributedRange::inline_attachment(...)
      • Attachment ranges now carry attachment: Option<AttachmentMeta> and emoji_image
    • Move text-effect types into submodules:
      • `m

iMessage Exporter 4.1.0: Chaparral Yucca contains the following fixes and improvements:

• New Features
  • Rendering Engine
    • Migrate HTML and TXT exporters to an Askama-based template engine
      • Hard cutover: previous string-builder code path is fully removed
      • 20 HTML templates and 22 TXT templates created
      • Per-format logic split between typed Rust view models and Askama template files
      • Shared rendering primitives consolidated so export types consume identical message structures
      • New view-model / driver layer is format-agnostic
  • Interactive iOS backup decryption password input via #730 (contributed by @jmcp)
    • Using an encrypted iOS backup without -x now prompts interactively
    • -x still supported for non-TTY contexts
• Bug Fixes
  • Disable progress bar when run headless for #738
    • Support both automatic TTY detection and manual suppression via --no-progress
  • Fix sticker attachments not incrementing the attachment index
  • Fix double-indentation on replies in TXT output
  • Fix SharePlay's embedded "Ended" line not receiving the per-line reply indent
  • Fix several balloon spacing inconsistencies:
    • Leading whitespace before ldtext in find_my/apple_pay
    • Trailing colon when ldtext is absent
    • Stray whitespace when app_name is omitted
  • Fix format_url rendering blank lines when primary/title/summary are empty strings
  • URL messages with a missing payload row are now rendered through the standard URL renderer
  • Normalize announcement wording across export types
  • Fix broken sticker conversion on Windows
  • Fix 1-indexed ffmpeg HEICS conversion assembly
  • Fix sticker offset reconstruction gaps
  • Error logs no longer clobber the progress bar
• Enhancements
  • ffmpeg processing warning now fires for animated stickers in addition to videos
  • Per-frame ffmpeg loop replaced with a single ffmpeg invocation that consumes both image sequences and applies alphamerge across them
  • Resolve self/recipient names through a single resolver so announcements and edits treat the local user identically
  • File-not-found errors now identify the missing path and resolution mode
  • Add context to edited message parse errors
• API Changes

  • Breaking

    • Remove Message::started_sharing_location() and Message::stopped_sharing_location() in favor of Message::shared_location_kind()
    • EditedEvent.text is now String
    • Remove Table::extract. Use Table::rows or Table::row instead.

    Multi-row iteration:

    Single-row fetch:

  • Ergonomic

    • Add StickerDecoration enum and Attachment::get_sticker_decoration()
      • Consolidates get_sticker_source / get_sticker_source_application_name / get_sticker_effect dispatch into a single call returning a format-agnostic decoration
    • Add impl Display for Expressive<'_>
    • Derive Clone + Copy on BubbleEffect, ScreenEffect, and Expressive<'a>
    • Derive Default on URLMessage<'a>
    • Unify the exporter's MessageFormatter trait under a single RuntimeError return type
      • format_app, format_tapback, and `forma