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I thought I’d take this opportunity to describe my recent experience submitting a bug report for WhatsApp on iOS. When you export a chat, you get a zip file co

by jl6 7y ago

I thought I’d take this opportunity to describe my recent experience submitting a bug report for WhatsApp on iOS. When you export a chat, you get a zip file containing the messages as plain text, plus any media files referenced in the chat. The .txt file unfortunately only contains the text-only messages, not the text captions for media items. I reported this as a bug and was told this was functioning as intended. So this is a warning to anyone who thinks they are backing up their WhatsApp chats via the export feature that their backups are incomplete. As a workaround, you can get hold of the ChatStorage.sqlite file from an iTunes backup of your phone. All text is in there but you obviously have to query the database and format it into a readable sequence of messages. This really, really sucks as a workflow and I hope if any WhatsApp engineers ever read this they start working on a real export feature.

HAPMCEZ 7y ago
Why would they? Conversation extract is a protected feature for law enforcement only. It will kill a contractors fee if WhatsApp release this for free.
- jgtrosh 7y ago
  I think the killer feature is snooping, not the format.
ximeng 7y ago
You also can't backup at all if there is too much data for your iphone. https://www.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/dsx6o9/whatsapp_backup/ https://www.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/dsx6o9/whatsapp_... is an example of people looking for ways to make this work.
tinus_hn 7y ago
I don’t think you can put this back anymore though (unless it’s as part of a complete restore)
- jl6 7y ago
  That’s ok for me - I only consider my iPhone a data capture device (at which it is excellent), not a general-purpose computer (at which it is... hobbled). I only use apps for which I can get data out of the walled garden and into a sane Linux environment. Ironically, considering the generally oppressive lockdown of the iOS environment, the prevalent use of SQLite databases means you can frequently get a good machine-readable extract. The weak link is iTunes. I know that one day they will kill it and make backups totally opaque, and that will be the end of me using iDevices.
abhchand 7y ago
It seems that WhatsApp has some oddity in how it handles captions on media items. I forward messages between various groups, but when you forward a media item like an image, it doesn't forward the caption with it. This is incredibly frustrating - sometimes you don't realize you've forwarded a photo of something that has no context, and my recipients have been often clueless until I have to clarify.
- davchana 7y ago
  Also, you can not copy that caption from the image message, you have to type it again.
  - airstrike 7y ago
    Yet somehow this POS app sold for $19+ billion and it's one of the most popular apps in the world...
    - pell 7y ago
      It's a very reliable app despite some of its flaws. It mainly sold that high due to high market share in some countries.
      - Polylactic_acid 7y ago
        Virtually every IM app I have ever used has been very reliable.
      - Natsu 7y ago
        It's basically required for doing business in Brazil, or at least it feels that way.
doersino 7y ago
I reported the same bug about four years ago, with exactly the same outcome.

by jl6 7y ago

HAPMCEZ 7y ago

Why would they? Conversation extract is a protected feature for law enforcement only. It will kill a contractors fee if WhatsApp release this for free.

jgtrosh 7y ago
I think the killer feature is snooping, not the format.

ximeng 7y ago

You also can't backup at all if there is too much data for your iphone. https://www.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/dsx6o9/whatsapp_backup/ https://www.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/dsx6o9/whatsapp_... is an example of people looking for ways to make this work.

tinus_hn 7y ago

I don’t think you can put this back anymore though (unless it’s as part of a complete restore)

jl6 7y ago
That’s ok for me - I only consider my iPhone a data capture device (at which it is excellent), not a general-purpose computer (at which it is... hobbled). I only use apps for which I can get data out of the walled garden and into a sane Linux environment. Ironically, considering the generally oppressive lockdown of the iOS environment, the prevalent use of SQLite databases means you can frequently get a good machine-readable extract. The weak link is iTunes. I know that one day they will kill it and make backups totally opaque, and that will be the end of me using iDevices.

abhchand 7y ago

It seems that WhatsApp has some oddity in how it handles captions on media items. I forward messages between various groups, but when you forward a media item like an image, it doesn't forward the caption with it. This is incredibly frustrating - sometimes you don't realize you've forwarded a photo of something that has no context, and my recipients have been often clueless until I have to clarify.

davchana 7y ago
Also, you can not copy that caption from the image message, you have to type it again.
- airstrike 7y ago
  Yet somehow this POS app sold for $19+ billion and it's one of the most popular apps in the world...
  - pell 7y ago
    It's a very reliable app despite some of its flaws. It mainly sold that high due to high market share in some countries.
    - Polylactic_acid 7y ago
      Virtually every IM app I have ever used has been very reliable.
    - Natsu 7y ago
      It's basically required for doing business in Brazil, or at least it feels that way.

doersino 7y ago

I reported the same bug about four years ago, with exactly the same outcome.