iMessage Conversation Analyzer

Copyright 2020-2024 Caleb Evans
Released under the MIT license

iMessage Conversation Analyzer (ICA) is a fully-typed Python library that will read the contents of an iMessage conversation via the Messages app's database on macOS. You can then gather various metrics of interest on the messages. The library also includes a CLI utility for easy use.

Much of this program was inspired by and built using findings from this blog post by Yorgos Askalidis.

Caveats

Please note that currently, you can only query conversations between you and a single other person (i.e. group chats are currently unsupported).

It should also be clarified that this program only supports macOS, since the presence of the chat.db file in your user Library directory is essential for the program to function.

Installation

1. Install Python 3

To install Python 3, you'll need to install the Apple Command Line Tools, which you can install by running:

xcode-select --install

Don't worry if you see a long download time; it will shorten rather quickly.

2. Set up virtualenv

pip3 install virtualenv

virtualenv --python=python3 .virtualenv
source .virtualenv/bin/activate

3. Install project depdendencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

Usage

The package includes both a Command Line API for simplicity/convenience, as well as a Python API for maximum flexibility.

Command Line API

To use ICA from the command line, simply invoke the ica command. The minimum required arguments are:

1. A path to an analyzer file to run, or the name of a built-in analyzer
2. The first and last name of the contact, via the -c/--contact flag
   1. If the contact has no last name on record, you can just pass the first name

Other formats

You can optionally pass the -f/--format flag to output to a specific format like CSV (supported formats include csv, excel/xlsx, and markdown/md).

ica message_totals -c 'Jane Fernbrook' -f csv

ica ./my_custom_analyzer.py -c 'Jane Fernbrook' -f csv

Writing to a file

Finally, there is an optional -o/--output flag if you want to output to a specified file. ICA will do its best to infer the format from the file extension, although you could also pass --format if you have special filename requirements.

ica transcript -c 'Thomas Riverstone' -o ./my_transcript.xlsx

Built-in analyzers

The library includes several built-in analyzers so that you can use ICA out of the box:

1. message_totals: a summary of message and reaction counts, by person and in total, as well as other insightful metrics
2. attachment_totals: lists count data by attachment type, including number of Spotify links shared, YouTube videos, Apple Music, etc.
3. most_frequent_emojis: count data for the top 10 most frequently used emojis across the entire conversation
4. totals_by_day: a comprehensive breakdown of message totals for every day you and the other person have been messaging in the conversation
5. transcript: a full, unedited transcript of every message, including reactions, between you and the other person (attachment files not included)

Again, to call one of these built-in analyzers, just pass it as the first argument to the ica command:

ica most_frequent_emojis -c 'Jane Fernbrook'

Python API

The Python API is much more powerful, allowing you to integrate ICA into any type of Python project that can run on macOS. All of the built-in analyzers themselves (under the ica/analyzers directory) actually use this API.

# get_my_transcript.py

import pandas as pd

import ica


# Export a transcript of the entire conversation
def main() -> None:
    # Allow your program to accept all the same CLI arguments as the `ica`
    # command; you can skip calling this if have other means of specifying the
    # contact name and output format
    cli_args = ica.get_cli_args()
    # Retrieve the dataframes corresponding to the massaged contents of the
    # database; dataframes include `message` and `attachment`
    dfs = ica.get_dataframes(
        contact_name=cli_args.contact_name,
        timezone=cli_args.timezone
    )
    # Send the results to stdout (or to file) in the given format
    ica.output_results(
        pd.DataFrame(
            {
                "timestamp": dfs.messages["datetime"],
                "is_from_me": dfs.messages["is_from_me"],
                "is_reaction": dfs.messages["is_reaction"],
                # U+FFFC is the object replacement character, which appears as
                # the textual message for every attachment
                "message": dfs.messages["text"].replace(
                    r"\ufffc", "(attachment)", regex=True
                ),
            }
        ),
        # The default format (None) corresponds to the pandas default dataframe
        # table format
        format=cli_args.format,
        # When output is None (the default), ICA will print to stdout
        output=cli_args.output,
    )


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

You can run the above program using the ica command, or execute it directly like any other Python program.

ica ./get_my_transcript.py -c 'Thomas Riverstone'

python ./get_my_transcript.py -c 'Thomas Riverstone'

python -m get_my_transcript -c 'Thomas Riverstone'

You're not limited to writing a command line program, though! The ica.get_dataframes() function is the only function you will need in any analyzer program. But beyond that, feel free to import other modules, send your results to other processes, or whatever you need to do!

You can also import any built-in analyzer (for your own post-processing) via the ica.analyzers namespace.

Errors and exceptions

• BaseAnalyzerException: the base exception class for all library-related errors and exceptions
• ContactNotFoundError: raised if the specified contact was not found
• ConversationNotFoundError: raised if the specified conversation was not found
• FormatNotSupportedError: raised if the specified format is not supported by the library

Using a specific timezone

By default, all dates and times are in the local timezone of the system on which ICA is run. If you'd like to change this, you can pass the --timezone / -t option to the CLI with an IANA timezone name.

ica totals_by_day -c 'Daniel Brightingale' -t UTC

ica totals_by_day -c 'Daniel Brightingale' -t America/New_York

The equivalent option for the Python API is the timezone parameter to ica.get_dataframes:

dfs = ica.get_dataframes(contact_name=my_contact_name, timezone='UTC')