this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2023
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ChatVault - store your whatsapp messages (alien.top)
submitted 11 months ago by NeoJackOfBlades@alien.top to c/main@selfhosted.forum
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I think this is a pretty niche demand and probably another topic for r/DataHoarder but anyway, here I am.

I created this application to basically have a way to store my WhatsApp messages away from the Google/Meta servers. Or at least not depend so much on Google backup.

Whatsapp has a very limited export functionality, which any user can use through the app's own interface. Once these messages and media have been exported, you can place them in a folder monitored by ChatVault, send them to an email monitored by ChatVault or upload them via the interface. Once ingested by chatvault, it will record the chat media on disk and save the messages in a database in a structured way. These messages can be accessed in a front end similar to a chat application.

It's still under development, some things need to be improved (mainly the UI), it's still far from ideal, it's true, the way Whatsapp allows us to export messages is quite bad, which makes the entire process of exporting and ingesting it into chatvault quite coupled but it can still be useful for those who want to store their messages independently, just like I wanted.

https://github.com/vitormarcal/chatvault

Edit: add an application interface image

The UI still needs some work, but it serves the purpose

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[–] harriershmarrier@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

How does the importing work? I have a whatsapp folder containing logs.zip, Databases, Backups, Media. I put the whole folder into the import folder of chatvault but execute disk import does not seem to do anything

[–] NeoJackOfBlades@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

For now, you enter the Whatsapp interface, go to export chat, choose whether you want to send it by email or on disk. With these files you can configure import via email, import through the interface with the zip file or place them in a specific folder, so that you can trigger the disk scan through the chatvault interface.

[–] ovizii@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

I'm also looking forward to a new way to import as like you, I manually backup the complete WA folder from my phone and thus have never lost any messages as well as been reliant on the Google Drive backups.