Is something like this possible but in reverse? Not to migrate to WhatsApp, but to export data from Signal to a neutral environment (text file, zip file, database, whatever). I can’t switch to Signal until this becomes possible.
On desktop you can copy the appdata folder over to the new device. (warning: this is not officially supported)
Note that you must close the app on desktop from the host computer before copying the files over, otherwise the forward secrecy stuff breaks and you'll have to reset the sessions on the migrated computer.
I've tried https://github.com/xeals/signal-back and it's 95% of the way there but could use more attention - maybe it's my backup but the xml-formatted convos were formatted differently than the ones that the sms backup/restore app emitted. I compared just to sanity check it would import correctly but currently I'm unsure if it's a good idea.
FWIW it's nice to have a plain text backup anyway, and a lot better than nothing. Maybe it works fine but I'd rather not import a backup that has "weird" results.
I’ve just discovered that you can sync the iOS app to the desktop client, and then extract messages from the SQLite database after decrypting with sqlcipher (key stored in the desktop client’s JSON config). Not sure how reliably the desktop client will stay in sync with the app though.
I don’t think so. I’m on iOS so I can always get access through my desktop app I have synced. That said, I’m also the kind of person who doesn’t care if I throw away all my text messages.
There is a fork that has the ability to export to encrypted zip, plain text, and the full database [1]. There seems to be a general theme of the dev's not supporting export/import functionality [2].
