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It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage

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Re: It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage

#81

Post by exolymph »

smoldesu wrote: post #14

We need a better communication standard. Apple made a killing selling their proprietary iMessage layer on top of SMS, but we could be actually making changes in this sector if we all used a standardized protocol. At least then we have a documented interface that we can choose to store however we want, or (perhaps wishful thinking) in a modular style. RCS is a great start, but I've already started to put my money on M…

The problem with decentralized protocols is that centralized ones outcompete them in terms of consumer usage.

Re: It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage

#82

Post by throwawaysea »

Many comments here are suggesting you can look at the DB on a Mac. What about people who have Windows computers? Is there a way to extract that information?

I also have a similar gripe with the browser. How can I sync my Safari tabs that are open on my iPhone with my PC?

Re: It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage

#83

Post by gnicholas »

ska wrote: post #73
derefr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there’s a separate idiomatic autocomplete flow for what you’re trying to do. Try hitting “New Message”; typing your friend’s name; and selecting the result. The New Message window will transform into the existing-conversation window for that contact. Not saying having it also work from search wouldn’t be good — but having this flow available is probably why the other issue hasn’t been fixed sooner.

> ry hitting “New Message”; typing your friend’s name; and selecting the result. The New Message window will transform into the existing-conversation window for that contact. I think this is how MS teams chat works too. It kind of makes sense, because it has a workflow for solving the "do you want your existing chat with Alice, or are you trying to start a new group chat with Alice & Bob" .

It does make sense if you're looking to send a new message. In my case, I'm typically doing a search so I can find information/photos from that thread. In this context, it's not so intuitive, and it never occurred to me to even try.

Re: It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage

#84

Post by slowraise »

KishanBagaria wrote: post #65

Apple's chat.db has an esoteric schema owing to the fact they never designed it from the ground up and instead kept adding new columns and tables with each macOS release. This makes their queries super complicated with multiple joins. Once you have the schema figured out, it's dead easy to build a third-party client that works better than the official one. Even search works great with a simple LIKE query but Apple re…

Is texts.com a work around for sending live imessages on a PC?

Re: It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage

#85

Post by leipert »

KishanBagaria wrote: post #65

Apple's chat.db has an esoteric schema owing to the fact they never designed it from the ground up and instead kept adding new columns and tables with each macOS release. This makes their queries super complicated with multiple joins. Once you have the schema figured out, it's dead easy to build a third-party client that works better than the official one. Even search works great with a simple LIKE query but Apple re…

Looks cool, will give it a try.

A little feedback on the landing page: Almost turned away because I thought „Sign up with Google“ was the only choice and I missed the little „Prefer entering email instead?“ below. I just prefer not having a Google account ;)

Maybe the styling of that link could be adjusted so that it isn’t glanced over that easily.

Re: It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage

#86

Post by tedunangst »

chmaynard wrote: post #66
closeparen wrote: post #58

On your Mac, iMessages are stored in a SQLite database which you can inspect. https://spin.atomicobject.com/2020/05/22/search-imessage-sql...

That's an undocumented implementation detail. It might change without warning at any time. Are you seriously recommending this as a solution for users who want to be able to read past messages?

Works a lot better than doing nothing.

Re: It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage

#87

Post by dave_aiello »

cryptoz wrote: post #5
4f77616973 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried emailing Craig Federighi about this? I emailed him a bunch of times about several things and he's a really nice and responsive person. If you do, tell us about it here on HN.

Related, I emailed Tim Cook about iPhone sensor future plans, and a high-level exec of like 25+ years wrote back to me within a week. Apple is remarkably good at getting back to cold emails to top execs.

I concur with that.

I had a problem that appeared to be a corner case with Apple Pay. I wrote a paper letter to Tim Cook about it, and within a week got contacted by a staff person in his office. He worked exclusively with me to identify issues I had not considered, and followed up on all of the direct effects and side effects until they were resolved.

Re: It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage

#88

Post by KishanBagaria »

slowraise wrote: post #84
KishanBagaria wrote: post #65

Apple's chat.db has an esoteric schema owing to the fact they never designed it from the ground up and instead kept adding new columns and tables with each macOS release. This makes their queries super complicated with multiple joins. Once you have the schema figured out, it's dead easy to build a third-party client that works better than the official one. Even search works great with a simple LIKE query but Apple re…

Is texts.com a work around for sending live imessages on a PC?

Yes, with a catch: it requires an always on Mac (which can be in the cloud) or a jailbroken iOS device. We plan to make it work without the catch.

I've worked with 10+ messaging platforms so far and Apple's protocol is the most obfuscated and complicated to reverse engineer. Apple has invested millions of dollars to make the iMessage protocol super hard to reverse engineer. It's how they sell tons of iPhones after all:

> However, Craig Federighi, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering and the executive in charge of iOS, feared that “iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove [an] obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones”. (https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/04/28/apple-admits-that-i...)

Re: It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage

#89

Post by PhantomGremlin »

KishanBagaria wrote: post #65

Apple's chat.db has an esoteric schema owing to the fact they never designed it from the ground up and instead kept adding new columns and tables with each macOS release. This makes their queries super complicated with multiple joins. Once you have the schema figured out, it's dead easy to build a third-party client that works better than the official one. Even search works great with a simple LIKE query but Apple re…

Source: I built a third-party desktop client for iMessage at https://texts.com

Does the texts.com client solve the original problem? Does it make it easy to go back and view all those old text messages? I know the website says "from forever ago easily". But you didn't say that explicitly in your post.

I assume you're being modest and not "pushing" your solution. But if it simply solves the problem, maybe you should be shouting this out loud!

Re: It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage

#90

Post by slowraise »

esolyt wrote: post #20
smoldesu wrote: post #14

We need a better communication standard. Apple made a killing selling their proprietary iMessage layer on top of SMS, but we could be actually making changes in this sector if we all used a standardized protocol. At least then we have a documented interface that we can choose to store however we want, or (perhaps wishful thinking) in a modular style. RCS is a great start, but I've already started to put my money on M…

Is it really "on top of SMS" though? The way I see, it's just a messaging app like WhatsApp, Telegram etc but they just combined it with the SMS app on their platform. I am failing to see the additional value of combining them. If Google bought WhatsApp and combined it with the stock SMS app of Android, I don't think I would prefer that.

Personally as a college student, all my friends use iPhones still. I have always wanted to switch to andriod, but one of the things that really holds me back is the fact iMessage still feels leagues above how SMS and texting works on andriod. Many subtle features of Imessage really make a difference with the overall texting experience on the iPhone over the long term.

Most of my friends do not have whatsapp, and we are constantly sharing photos and video. Regular SMS can barely send pictures let alone videos, and I don't want to go through other means to simply shoot my friend a quick video of something.

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