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signal-media-exporter

Python script to export media files from Signal Desktop.

The Signal Desktop client stores attachment files in the $HOME/.config/Signal/attachments.noindex folder. This script opens the encrypted SQLite database to gather the associated metadata (sender number, message timestamp and expiration date, media content type) and copies the media files to the configured export directory, grouped by the sender number/name. It can be run without needing to exit the Signal Desktop client and will only process newly received media files when run in regular intervals.

Features

  • export media files to a specified output directory
  • either export files from all senders (by number) or from selected senders only (by assigning names)
  • file name and modification time will be set to the timestamp of the original message
  • only newly received media files will be processed on repeated runs - but if you decide to add or rename a selected sender at a later time, all missing media files will be exported on the next run
  • if the same media file appears in multiple conversations, only the earliest instance will be exported (deduplication)
  • media files from expiring messages are not exported by default

Requirements

libsqlcipher

If you're using Linux, you can use the sqlcipher3-binary pip package with a completely self-contained sqlcipher3, statically-linked against the most recent release of libsqlcipher.

Otherwise, you need to use the sqlcipher3 pip package. Then, libsqlcipher must be installed on your system before installing the pip package, so that the binary extension module can be compiled. (In case you get a No module named 'sqlcipher3' error afterwards, the compilation most likely failed due to the library not being found.)

Consult your operating system documentation for how to install SQL Cipher. For Arch Linux, you can install the sqlcipher package. For Debian, there is a (currently outdated) libsqlcipher-dev package.

You can also manually build libsqlcipher by cloning the sqlcipher repository and following the build instructions, followed by sudo make install && sudo ldconfig.

Python (>=3.7)

If you have poetry installed, you can run:

$ poetry install
$ poetry run signal-media-exporter -h

Otherwise, using only pip, you can create a virtalenv:

$ python3 -m venv venv
$ source venv/bin/activate
(venv) $ pip install -r requirements.txt
(venv) $ python -m signal_media_exporter -h

And to install for use from outside the project's directory:

$ poetry build
$ python3 -m pip install dist/*.tar.gz
$ signal-media-exporter -h

Usage / Configuration

You can either just use the similar command line parameters (see signal-media-exporter -h) or create a config.json file by modifying the supplied config.json.example:

{
    "outputDir": "./media",
    "includeExpiringMessages": false,
    "includeAttachments": "visual",
    "map": {
        "+430000000000": "Me",
        "+430000000001": "My buddy"
    }
}
  • outputDir: Output directory for media files, as a relative or absolute path. Inside this directory, subdirectories for the sender numbers or names will be created.
  • includeExpiringMessages: Whether to include media files from messages that are set to expire in the future.
  • includeAttachments: Which types of attachments to include. Options are:
    • "all": All attachments, including audio.
    • "visual": Visual attachments, like JPG, PNG and GIF.
    • "file": Any file attachment that isn't a visual attachment.
  • map: If you include this dict, only the media files sent by the listed key numbers, assigned names or profile names will be exported, and the supplied value name will be used for the outputDir subdirectories (including your own number). If omitted, all media files will be exported using the senders' numbers, where available, as subdirectories. Phone numbers must be given in complete E.164 format, including the country code.