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johanw666 / Signal-Android

Fork from a private messenger for Android with extra options added: full backup and (partial, ony text) xml backup of messages. Restore can happen at any time, not only after a fresh install. Import SMS database. Import of (unencrypted) WhatsApp databases. Removed apk expire. Choose between passphrase protection and the Android screenlock. Choice for the backup location (internal or removable storage on Android < 11 (on 11 and higher this is already possible)). Set the maptype in the place picker. Option to treat view-once media as normal media. Option to ignore remote deletion. Choose between FCM or websocket notification delivery.
https://johanw.home.xs4all.nl/Signal/signal-jw.html
GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
246 stars 16 forks source link

Export Signal encrypted chats as SMS alongside regular SMS? #61

Open Killrmemz opened 1 year ago

Killrmemz commented 1 year ago

As we all know, Signal has caused quite a stir lately with announcing it will drop SMS. They have an SMS export in the Beta right now, but as far as I am aware, it only exports existing, unencrypted SMS chats and not everything. Given I have a decent number of people who I've helped move to Signal for their SMS, I don't want to be the one left apologizing when either 1: they keep using signal and SMS stops coming in or 2: they grab a regular SMS app and lose half their message history because they will never touch Signal again. With that reasoning in mind, I would like to probe on the idea of exporting all Signal chat history, SMS or native, into an SMS importable format, to make both my household life and work life easier, as well as that of many others in similar shoes of pulling out hair trying to make the fewest people the most minimally upset over this oncoming freight train of an issue.

ijesaboy commented 1 year ago

@Killrmemz Thanks for posting. I sympathize with the impulse and the idea you're probing. I'm curious, are you thinking to include MMS with SMS export? I'm not trying to thinking to leave Signal myself, but for so many folks the inline multimedia messages (be they voicenotes, video, or images) are also a key part of the thread. If you are somehow able to capture those things in a export and have a process for importing them into a regular SMS app (e.g. Android Messenger), I'd be greatly interested.

Otherwise, before you go down that hole, perhaps verify @johanw666 Signal-Android fork doesn't already provide the kind of export or backup (e.g. a plaintext-only export compatible with 'SMS Backup & Restore') you're thinking of.

erazemk commented 1 year ago

I just tested this and thought it was implied that images/videos will be stored as MMS (or however they are stored in Google Messages if using chat features), but apparently they are not, only text messages are restored.