What is this?

Simply put, this is a shell script (imx.sh) that extracts the text of all messages from an iMessage database, and places them in a series of text files organized by telephone number. It works on recent versions of macOS - it has been verified to work on Catalina 10.15.5. There has been no extensive testing to date; this should be considered experimental software.

Working with Apple's security

The simplest method to enable imx.sh to run is to give the Terminal.app Full Disk Access in System Preferences.

What is the provenance of this code?

Please refer to the Wiki.

How do I use this?

1. Copy the script to your local machine - at least two ways to do this:

   • My preferred way is that you fork or clone this repo, and submit pull requests to incorporate any improvements you think worthwhile.

   • Another way is to simply copy the contents of imx.sh to your machine, save it as a file and make it executable using chmod 755 ./imx.sh

2. Once you have an executable copy of imx.sh, cd to that folder - e.g. cd /Users/<yourusername>/MyScripts:

   mkdir extract
   ./baskup.sh
   

   Depending upon the size of your iMessage database & the other usual variables, this should finish "quickly" - 2-10 seconds? When it completes, you will find the folder you created is now populated with a series of folders and files. You may review them using less, which should result in something similar to the following. Note that this output reflects only two "conversations" in the database - you may have more than that. In this context a "conversation" is simply another number/person with whom you have exchanged messages:

   ls -lR ./extract | less 
    % ls -lR ./backup
   total 0
   drwxr-xr-x  4 tuser  staff  128 Jun 21 21:55 +12345678901
   drwxr-xr-x  4 tuser  staff  128 Jun 21 21:55 +12345074321
   
   ./backup/+12345678901:
   total 32
   drwxr-xr-x  2 tuser  staff     64 Jun 21 21:55 Attachments
   -rw-r--r--@ 1 tuser  staff  16361 Jun 22 01:10 iMessage;-;+12345678901.txt
   
   ./backup/+12345678901/Attachments:
   
   ./backup/+12345074321:
   total 8
   drwxr-xr-x  2 tuser  staff  64 Jun 21 21:55 Attachments
   -rw-r--r--  1 tuser  staff  83 Jun 22 01:10 iMessage;-;+12345074321.txt
   
   ./backup/+12345074321/Attachments:
   

   Also note that ls -lR is the recursive form of the list command, and so we see everything in the ./extract folder listed. The text files (e.g. iMessage;-;+12345678901.txt may be opened in your text editor, and/or processed by another script. Each message is a 'record' in the file formatted roughly as follows:

   Name (Me or Friend) | Text of message | date-time stamp

   There is a single option available with imx.sh: imx.sh -a. This option will extract all media (pictures, sound, video) and files found in the iMessage database. They are organized by "conversation" in the subfolder named Attachments.

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REFERENCES & RELATED ITEMS

1. Analyzing iMessage conversations : S. Morse's blog re iMessage group chats - resources & Python code.
2. Getting Attached: Apple Messaging Attachments : Analysis of chat.db - the SQLite database for iMsg
3. iMessage-Export : PHP scripts to export the iMsg db in HTML or CSV format (but no group msgs)
4. iMessageAnalyzer : Provides analysis (incl. graphs & charts) of messaging history
5. SQLite Commands useful w/ chat.db : from the author of iMessageAnalyzer