Ask HN: How to download all data from WhatsApp

[cassianoleal]

I don't want to make this a political or sociological discussion about Facebook or WhatsApp.

For personal reasons I have decided to stop using WhatsApp.

When I closed my Facebook and Instagram accounts I was able to download all my data, including messages and media.

I was unable to do the same with my WhatsApp data, at least not unless I export each chat individually.

Does anyone know of a way to get such data in a cohesive way for my personal archive?

[throwaway568]

You can get into the iPhone or Android and copy the SQLite database to your computer.

The images can be tricky - some form of reference to the image in your phone, hard to put together; otherwise the messages in all the chats are in the database, navigable by a SQLite client.

Speaking from personal experience porting messages from iPhone to Android.

[RobertSponge → throwaway568]

The backup is encrypted. The private key can be extracted if your android device is rooted.

[2rsf → throwaway568]

Isn't it encrypted ?

[jolmg]

> at least not unless I export each chat individually.

Careful not to assume that works. Last time I did that some years ago, the export was missing like a year's worth of messages.

[andrewshadura]

I used a self-hosted WhatsApp to Matrix bridge to create a Matrix version of all chats I participated in, backfilled the history and downloaded all media.

[dave_sid]

Your best bet is to screenshot the messages on your phone then run them through some OCR software. A larger screen size will make this quicker.

[jolmg → dave_sid]

A better trick is to open the chat on the desktop browser, then do something so it continuously scrolls up until the whole chat history is loaded. You can use a loop or you can put something heavy on the pageup key.

When it's ready, open up the web inspector and copy the whole HTML. It can be huge. After you paste it, make sure the beginning and end are there. It might be larger than the clipboard buffer. If it was incomplete when copying from one browser, try another.

If on X11, I think primary selection can be unlimited in theory, but the browser might not support it in the web inspector. If you want to try that, you'd have to use the console to print the html to it or to the page (more messy, but more likely to work). Then highlight and paste with middleclick somewhere.

Of course, if the web inspector has some type of "save DOM to file" feature, then that would be far simpler.

[dave_sid → jolmg]

If that fails, try asking a neighbour to read your messages aloud and write down what they say on some A4 size sheets of paper. When they finish talking, you should find that your chat history is now on the A4 sheets of paper. Don’t lose this however or you’re back to the same problem you had initially!

[llimos → dave_sid]

The British humour matches the British spelling perfectly.