Live data from Hacker News

Extracting WhatsApp Messages from an iOS Backup

yasoob.me

71–80 of 81 posts

Re: Extracting WhatsApp Messages from an iOS Backup

#71
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banking apps?

That doesn't make any sense, how I'm suppose to do my personal budgeting? And by the way you can screenshot in a browser.

It doesn't have to make any sense, banking "consultants" have put blocking screenshots in their "security requirements" and now all of them block screenshots.

You wouldn't want to risk being non-compliance when a breach happens would you?

Re: Extracting WhatsApp Messages from an iOS Backup

#72
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people aren’t importing 200GB of photos from their iPhone in one go…

If you started on iOS in 2010 and kept all your photos, this is hardly an edge case. People take a crazy amount of photos nowadays, definitely not unique to photographers.

I think the majority of people don’t copy photos from their iPhone to their laptop at all.

Firstly, they may not have a laptop. Secondly, I expect many more of those who have one will sync photos from their phone to iCloud and from iCloud to their laptop then directly from their phone to their laptop.

Yes, for large archives, that costs money ($10 a month gets you 2TB if iCloud storage), but I guess/think the convenience and having almost direct backups in case you lose your phone are worth it for most people who want to do such copying.

If so, it _is_ an edge case.

Re: Extracting WhatsApp Messages from an iOS Backup

#73
post #57

Extracting isn't the hard part. I have yet to figure out how to append Whatsapp message from a previous backup which I have held for 8 years. The iOS backup was corrupted and I had to start over again at the time. The Whatsapp file was extracted but I never got round to it. ( Along with important pictures inside the Whatsapp) To this day I still blame on it on iOS backup problem. Which is still a thing in 2022. I won…

https://blog.google/products/android/whatsapp-chat-history/?...

Re: Extracting WhatsApp Messages from an iOS Backup

#74
post #28
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I use it mainly for transferring photos from my iPhone to my MacBook Pro M1. This caught me by surprise; I'm not sure if you're aware, but you can open up Image Capture (built-in Mac app) to import photos from your iPhone. Obviously iMazing can do other things as well, but just in case.

Have they improved that? Last I tried with 200GB or so of photos it just froze.

Not as of 2 months ago. It took days of crashing or hanging programs to get the photos off my wife's iPhone. I tried everything mentioned including Image Capture on a new MacBook, and the problems were at least as bad for me. I had to change the sleep settings on every device involved to multiple hours because a 30 minute hang was on the good side. In the end, what ended up working best was a full backup of the phone to a PC with iTunes, and extracting the photos out of the backup with iMazing.

For perspective.. I remember downloading and installing Linux off floppies. That sucked too, especially with bad disks or download errors, but it was less frustrating than this.

It seems like they don't improve it because iCloud seems like it works smoothly, and they get an on-going profit stream out of it. The process was so brutal I almost broke down and paid for a ton of iCloud storage.. but didn't because getting lots of photos out of iCloud is also painful.

Re: Extracting WhatsApp Messages from an iOS Backup

#75
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have they improved that? Last I tried with 200GB or so of photos it just froze.

Not as of 2 months ago. It took days of crashing or hanging programs to get the photos off my wife's iPhone. I tried everything mentioned including Image Capture on a new MacBook, and the problems were at least as bad for me. I had to change the sleep settings on every device involved to multiple hours because a 30 minute hang was on the good side. In the end, what ended up working best was a full backup of the phone…

Were you not about to use the import function in Mac OS Photos app? If you connect a phone via cable, it should present a list of photos and let you import them to the Photos local library.

Re: Extracting WhatsApp Messages from an iOS Backup

#76
post #26

You might also be interested in a software called iMazing. It’s a paid piece of software, not free, but it’s worth the price imo. I use it mainly for transferring photos from my iPhone to my MacBook Pro M1. But I know that iMazing can back up WhatsApp messages as well, among other features. https://imazing.com/ https://imazing.com/guides/export-and-print-whatsapp-chats-f...

> I use it mainly for transferring photos from my iPhone to my MacBook Pro M1. This caught me by surprise; I'm not sure if you're aware, but you can open up Image Capture (built-in Mac app) to import photos from your iPhone. Obviously iMazing can do other things as well, but just in case.

The Apple Photos app will also import photos from your phone. Just connect via lightning and it should show you a list of photos that can be imported. It will also do duplicate filtering if you already have imported some. It also has an option to remove the photos from your phone if you want to free up space.

I don’t use that feature as much anymore as I’m all in on iCloud now, but it worked fine when I last did it about a year ago.

Re: Extracting WhatsApp Messages from an iOS Backup

#77
This kind of hacking shouldn’t be necessary.

I think WhatsApp should be fined heavily for not providing the portability that the GDPR requires them to provide.

Yes, (on iOS) you can export your settings and each individual chat, but IMO they should have a one-click solution.

(I think their argument for not having to provide it is that WhatsApp messages are stored on each user’s phone, not on their servers, but IMO, they still are inside WhatsApp’s realm. Certainly, on iOS you cannot open them in any other way than to the WhatsApp app)

Re: Extracting WhatsApp Messages from an iOS Backup

#78
post #76
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I use it mainly for transferring photos from my iPhone to my MacBook Pro M1. This caught me by surprise; I'm not sure if you're aware, but you can open up Image Capture (built-in Mac app) to import photos from your iPhone. Obviously iMazing can do other things as well, but just in case.

The Apple Photos app will also import photos from your phone. Just connect via lightning and it should show you a list of photos that can be imported. It will also do duplicate filtering if you already have imported some. It also has an option to remove the photos from your phone if you want to free up space. I don’t use that feature as much anymore as I’m all in on iCloud now, but it worked fine when I last did it a…

Apple Photos has been terrible for dealing with huge amounts of photos, that’s why I stopped using it. Meanwhile iMazing works perfectly for transferring the photos, and then I keep them in plain old folders.

Re: Extracting WhatsApp Messages from an iOS Backup

#79
post #59

My setup (following Schneier's essay 'data is a toxic asset') is as follows: 1 week self-destructing messages in Signal (I don't use WhatsApp). If its an important message I save it (can't remember the last time that happened), if its an important picture I save it (which then gets uploaded to Nextcloud, which gets backed up to a Synology elsewhere, and it gets deleted from my smartphone but available via Nextcloud;…

> the only data there automagically gets removed within a week Nice! To be clear, you can't count on the same thing happening on the other end of the connection due to various alternative Signal clients. This is kind of where Snapchat is king of the hill, but obviously nothing is perfect!

That's a fair point.

Snapchat APK can be modded, with root one can make screenshots and videos (I believe it is how some revenche porn is made). There's also analog screenshots (photos), and the end point (smartphone) can be hacked e.g. contain malware.

In my M.O. I assume the end point is not compromised and is honest; otherwise, whatever I write can be traced back to me.

Best thing would be not saying it, but if you were to make a good setup it wouldn't involve Android or iOS but something like Tails. And yet, we know deployed military in Ukraine don't use such. But what they do is better than analogue Russian on 8900 MHz.

Re: Extracting WhatsApp Messages from an iOS Backup

#80
post #6

Thank you so much for this. We recently migrated a relative's phone from Android to iPhone and were shocked to notice there is no way to migrate WhatsApp account history from the Android-->iOS. Do you have any suggestions for this?

I know there is a paid app on Playstore that apparently works. Don’t remember the name. Will have to look it up. I came across it during my research. But there is also this on GitHub: https://github.com/residentsummer/watoi Give it a try and see how it goes?

This is Android to IOS i was think of IOS to Android. Btw i was wondering why do the paid apps charge so much for this transfer. But thanks to you now i know this stuff is complicated and you have done an amazing work decoding it. What if now the next post about how to import this to Android? Then a program which is open source project for this purpose? But Only if you have time!
Post reply on HN