SMS Tools

Multipurpose import / export / merge tool for your text message history. (formally Android-SMS-DB-importer)

Now on PyPi (the python package index) and available using pip! pip install smstools puts smstools in your path, you're ready to roll.

Convert your message history between:

• iOS 5, 6, and 7 databases directly (from backup or from your jailbroken phone directly)
• Android mmssms.db database (directly from phone)
• Android XML from the SMS Backup & Restore app
• CSV files
• JSON files
• google voice data dump (see more details below)

Get all of your old messages onto your android phone.

Why?

• Leaving Google Voice?
• Getting a new iPhone or Android phone?
• Want a searchable CSV, JSON, or XML file of your conversations?
• Want to move all your messages from your past into a new, date-sorted, database?

Howto:

Now on PyPi (the python package index) and available using pip! pip install smstools puts smstools in your path, you're ready to roll.

usage: smstools [-h] [--type {xml,json,android,csv,ios5,ios7,ios6}]
                    infiles [infiles ...] outfile

Where do I get my files from?

• iPhone:
  • Pull from your iTunes backup: See below!
  • If you're jailbroken: pull down /private/var/mobile/Library/SMS/sms.db
• Android:
  • mmssms.db pulled from your phone: See below!
  • SMS Backup & Restore to get an XML file of your messages.
• Google Voice: Work in progress

Getting your iPhone messages from iTunes backup

1. Open the right folder:
   • On Mac OS X open "~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/"
   • On Windows 7/Vista open "C:\Users[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\"
2. Open the most recent folder (the most recent backup)
3. Get the file named "3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28" and rename it to sms.db

What is the Android mmssms.db file?

This is the sqlite file where your Android phone stores messages. To read or write it you'll need root. It's located at /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases/mmssms.db

It may be possible to read it directly using ADB by running the adb pull command as com.android.providers.telephony. Otherwise use SMS Backup & Restore or something similar.

So why use this option?

• It's orders of magnitude faster. Perfect for load testing mms applications with different databases (why I created this)
• Much better database performance. After importing the output.xml file with SMSBackupRestore.apk my Messaging.apk was left completely unusable. SMSBackupRestore is great, but it doesn't handle tens of thousands of messages.

My results

When I run this tool on my Google Voice data it processes 6675 messages into 149 conversations in 15 seconds, which is 435 average entries/second. Not bad!