ReagentX/imessage-exporter 5.0.1

Speckled Clarkia

on GitHub

iMessage Exporter 5.0.1: Speckled Clarkia contains the following fixes and improvements:

• New Features
  • Contacts-based conversation merging
    • Combine phone numbers and email addresses belonging to one person, including linked Contacts cards on macOS and iOS
    • Merge conversations split across those addresses, including group chats
    • Preserve separate group chats with different names unless Messages explicitly links them
    • Skip ambiguous identity matches when an address belongs to multiple Contacts cards
  • Allow --contacts-path (-n) to override the Contacts database in encrypted and unencrypted iOS backups
• Performance
  • Read message bodies and edit histories with message rows instead of fetching them separately for each message
  • Parse body data directly from query results, avoiding intermediate buffers in the main decoding path
  • Replace the separate payload-presence query with a flag in the message query
• Bug Fixes
  • Fix inflated poll vote counts when participants change selections or Messages repeats vote updates for #823
  • Fix null values in archived app-message payloads and render links as plain URLs when preview metadata is absent or null for #805
  • Preserve recovered body components and edit history when text recovery fails
  • Keep attachments and handwriting from recovered deleted messages in their conversation’s attachment directory for #827
  • Route messages from linked chat rows without participant records to their conversation instead of the orphaned transcript
  • Fix incorrect contact matches caused by country-code collisions and iOS search-index phone fragments
  • Reject unmatched conversation filters even when date filters are supplied
  • Reject out-of-range handwriting dimensions and handle empty text-rendering canvases
  • Fix a performance regression where the bundled SQLite 3.54 update recompiled cached queries for every message for #839
• Enhancements
  • Improve conversation naming and filtering
    • Use one filename and attachment directory for every chat row in a merged conversation
    • Choose consistent contact names and fallback addresses, honoring linked contacts’ preferred names
    • List each participant once and improve long filename truncation and remaining-participant counts
    • Match conversation filters against every Messages address belonging to a grouped participant
  • Clarify diagnostic counts and report participants and conversations merged through Contacts
  • Improve database and backup path errors for #829, #808, #647, #590, #493, and #359
    • Distinguish missing paths, permission failures, invalid SQLite files, and databases without Messages data
    • Suggest database and backup locations based on files found on disk
    • Improve default home-directory resolution, including Windows support
• API Changes
  • Breaking (migration guide)
    • Decode message text, body components, and edit history during row loading; remove separate body-decoding calls
    • Replace callback streaming and generic query/cache traits with prepared-statement iteration and concrete APIs
    • Separate participant identity groups from stored addresses and use those groups for chat deduplication
    • Return decoded timestamps in UTC and accept explicit timezones for date filtering and presentation
    • Separate exported attachment paths and media types from database rows
    • Revise diagnostic fields, error variants, and public module paths
  • Ergonomic
    • Re-export chrono, plist, and rusqlite from imessage_database
• Miscellaneous
  • Exclude test fixtures from the published library package
  • Recommend cargo install --locked
  • Expand regression coverage, consolidate exporter tests, and enforce formatting in CI
  • Update supported-version documentation
  • Bump dependencies and build with latest rustc

⚠️ Version 5.0 includes breaking API changes and changes to conversation grouping, filenames, and attachment directories. See the migration guide for replacement APIs, examples, and export behavior.