If you have them archived as iChat files on a Mac (Library/Messages/Archive), you could try Past: https://zeezide.de/en/products/past/
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
#272Apple'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…
any way to get around the reg/invite wall to try it out?
Re: It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are those messages queryable in Gmail?
No, I am referring to Google's SMS platform. It interfaces to nearly all other carriers, and is accessible through the "Voice" app or the web page at https://voice.google.com
Tell Voice to send your messages to email, and they'll be searchable from there. Use a query to ensure that you're searching text messages from Voice based on from address or subject. It won't help with searching messages that you've sent, unfortunately, not will it help with messages from before you turned the option on; I've had it on forever as I used to use it for desktop notifications.
Re: It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
iMessage is backwards compatible with older devices. This means Apple can’t stop supporting old versions of the protocol, even as they are “cracked”.
They could release updates for those older devices to unbreak them after protocol changes.
They could, but it seems like a lot of work for them. I am not sure they even have the pipeline to build old OSes anymore…
Re: It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage
#275We 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.
It's a question of who comes first- Linux was first to market as a cloud OS, so it dominated. Email came first for long-form asynchronous messages, so it dominates.
Re: It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage
#276About 10 years ago, I wrote an app for reading, searching, and exporting iPhone texts based on the sqlite files in a backup. I don't think it works any longer on the latest iOS, but I open sourced the code if anyone wants to pick it up: http://www.allyourtexts.com/
It doesn't now, but I can confirm that it was an excellent piece of software before. Thank you!