{"id":2131,"date":"2016-09-15T21:36:31","date_gmt":"2016-09-15T20:36:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/denbeke.be\/blog\/?p=2131"},"modified":"2017-10-16T08:28:16","modified_gmt":"2017-10-16T07:28:16","slug":"exporting-messages-and-attachments-from-iphone-to-mac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/denbeke.be\/blog\/mac\/exporting-messages-and-attachments-from-iphone-to-mac\/","title":{"rendered":"Exporting messages and attachments from iPhone to Mac"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I accidentally deleted an important sms conversation from my Mac (for which I didn’t have a Time Machine backup). I thought it would be fairly easy to copy all my messages from my iPhone to my Mac, but it wasn’t that easy…<\/p>\n

This guides helps you copy all your messages from iOS to OS X. You could invert the process to copy your messages from OS X to iOS.<\/p>\n

Copying the databases<\/h3>\n

Before continuing, quit Messages app on your Mac.<\/p>\n

First you need sms.db<\/code> and Attachments<\/code> folder from the iPhone. You can use a backup extractor tool to restore the file structure.
\nYou can also manually find the backup folder in ~\/Library\/Application Support\/MobileSync\/Backup<\/code>. The files in that backup folder are named with the SHA-1 hash of the original file in the iOS filesystem. The file for sms.db<\/code> is called 3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28<\/code>. Just rename it to sms.db<\/code> and you have your SMS database. (I extracted the attachments folder with a third-party app)<\/p>\n

Now backup ~\/Library\/Messages<\/code> on your Mac and replace all its contents with sms.db<\/code> and Attachments<\/code> from your iPhone. Rename sms.db<\/code> to chat.db<\/code>.<\/p>\n

Remove the ~\/Library\/Containers\/com.apple.iChat<\/code> folder.<\/p>\n

Fixing attachments<\/h3>\n

On iOS, the messages are stored in ~\/Library\/SMS\/<\/code> directory. This is not the case on OS X, where they are stored in ~\/Library\/Message\/<\/code>. This results in your attachments not showing op in Messages on Mac. In order to solve this, we need to execute a Sqlite query to rename SMS<\/em> to Messages<\/em> for each attachment:<\/p>\n

UPDATE attachment\r\nSET \r\n  filename = replace(filename, '\/Library\/SMS\/Attachments\/', '\/Library\/Messages\/Attachments\/')\r\nWHERE\r\n  filename LIKE '%\/Library\/SMS\/Attachments\/%';<\/code><\/pre>\n
I used DB Browser for SQLite<\/a> to browse and edit the SQL database. You can execute the above SQL query by going to the Execute SQL<\/em> tab.<\/p>\n
Fixing version<\/h3>\n
It is also possible that you need to update the Sqlite version number. Otherwise Messages.app will mark the database file as incompatible. Again, we do this by executing a query:<\/p>\n
UPDATE _SqliteDatabaseProperties\r\nSET\r\n    value = '9007'\r\nWHERE key = '_ClientVersion';<\/code><\/pre>\n
I got the 9007<\/code> value from the chat.db<\/code> database.<\/em><\/p>\n
Restart<\/h3>\n
Once all of this is done, restart your Mac and verify that your messages have arrived in Messages app.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday I accidentally deleted an important sms conversation from my Mac (for which I didn’t have a Time Machine backup). I thought it would be fairly easy to copy all my messages from my iPhone to my Mac, but it wasn’t that easy… This guides helps you copy all your messages from iOS to OS […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[114,161],"tags":[129,126,149,224],"yoast_head":"\nExporting messages and attachments from iPhone to Mac – DenBeke<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/denbeke.be\/blog\/mac\/exporting-messages-and-attachments-from-iphone-to-mac\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Exporting messages and attachments from iPhone to Mac – DenBeke\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Yesterday I accidentally deleted an important sms conversation from my Mac (for which I didn’t have a Time Machine backup). I thought it would be fairly easy to copy all my messages from my iPhone to my Mac, but it wasn’t that easy… This guides helps you copy all your messages from iOS to OS […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/denbeke.be\/blog\/mac\/exporting-messages-and-attachments-from-iphone-to-mac\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"DenBeke\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-09-15T20:36:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-10-16T07:28:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@MthsBk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@MthsBk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"2 minutes\">\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/denbeke.be\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/denbeke.be\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"DenBeke\",\"description\":\"Mathias Beke\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/denbeke.be\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/denbeke.be\/blog\/mac\/exporting-messages-and-attachments-from-iphone-to-mac\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/denbeke.be\/blog\/mac\/exporting-messages-and-attachments-from-iphone-to-mac\/\",\"name\":\"Exporting messages and attachments from iPhone to Mac – DenBeke\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/denbeke.be\/blog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2016-09-15T20:36:31+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-10-16T07:28:16+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/denbeke.be\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/386878f712fe3fe22227216f087772dc\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/denbeke.be\/blog\/mac\/exporting-messages-and-attachments-from-iphone-to-mac\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/denbeke.be\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/386878f712fe3fe22227216f087772dc\",\"name\":\"Mathias Beke\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/denbeke.be\/blog\/#personlogo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/015ba35e6ce4f5859e3888ca99807575?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Mathias Beke\"}}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/denbeke.be\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2131"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/denbeke.be\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/denbeke.be\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/denbeke.be\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/denbeke.be\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2131"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/denbeke.be\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2260,"href":"https:\/\/denbeke.be\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2131\/revisions\/2260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/denbeke.be\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/denbeke.be\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/denbeke.be\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}