This is an Angular-based web app designed to read the XML backup files produced by the Android app SMS Backup & Restore by Ritesh. It is designed to work in modern browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari. This app works locally and your SMS data does not leave your machine.
This app is currently in alpha.
You can access the app here: http://mattj.io/sms-backup-reader-2/
- Load SMS backup files produced by and Android app SMS Backup & Restore by Ritesh
- International support (non-latin character) and emoji support
- MSS support (thanks to JLTRY)
- VCF support (thanks to JLTRY)
- Styles need serious work and overall UX is clunky
- All data is loaded into JS memory, which means:
- Large backups (>3,000 SMS) will freeze the UI until they are loaded
- Loading specific conversations may be slow and freeze the UI
- App breaks when using settings after loading data
If you encounter other issues, please add the issues here: https://github.com/devadvance/sms-backup-reader-2/issues.
- Export SMS to CSV or TXT
- Support for exporting media from MMS
- More?
SMS Backup & Restore saves emojis and other special characters in a very interesting way.
Likely, it goes back to how characters are encoded in SMS.
- If all characters in the SMS are English + a few extra, then it essentially stores them all as ASCII*
- If even one of the characters in the SMS is beyond the base character set, then the entire message is stored as UTF-16*
*Not actually ASCII or UTF-16. There are GSM semi-equivalents. Of course it's not easy.
SMS Backup Reader 2 is made available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for details.