Epistolaire

Epistolaire is an Android app to backup SMSes AND MMSes (unlike most "SMS backup" apps), in a nutshell.

Why use it?

• saves SMS/MMSes to a JSON file that's very close to a dump of Android's message database
• also saves images etc. from MMSes
• includes a JSON to pretty-HTML converter
• free and open-source, no ads

Why not use it?

• cannot restore messages from the JSON file to Android SMS/MMSes
• UI is ugly because it's my first Android app

JSON format

• the output file is a JSON object having a "conversations" key (value is a JSON array)
• a conversation is a list of messages (JSON objects)
• a message is either a SMS or an MMS
• a SMS has all the keys a SMS message has in the content://sms/ context
  • examples: _id, thread_id, address, date, date_sent, type, body
• a MMS has all the keys a MMS message has in the content://mms/ context plus extra keys
  • examples: _id, thread_id, date, msg_box
• extra MMS keys are "addresses" (a list of strings being the sender then the recipients) and "parts"
• each MMS part is a JSON object having all the keys a part has in the content://mms/part/ context
  • examples: _id, mid, text, ct, name
• MMS parts having a binary file have the content encoded as base64 in the "my_content" key

See backup.schema.json file for a JSON-schema description.

JSON to HTML

The JSON to HTML converter is a separate Python script in the "viewer" directory. It will create an HTML file per conversation.

cd viewer
./converter.py path/to/backup.json

Privacy

Epistolaire doesn't upload your messages anywhere. It just dumps a JSON file on your device. Make sure any third-party app doesn't harvest your device's files though.

Why isn't Epistolaire on google-play

I don't use google-play, and I don't intend to ever do, so I won't upload Epistolaire on it.

License

Epistolaire is licensed under the Unlicense, which is basically public domain.