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Add iMessage (macOS) support - #110

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abrignoni merged 2 commits into
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feat/imessage-macos
Sep 2, 2026
Merged

Add iMessage (macOS) support#110
abrignoni merged 2 commits into
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feat/imessage-macos

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Adds iMessage support for macOS. Four artifacts from a user's chat.db:

  • Messages: composed/read/delivered time, direction, sender, chat, body text, service, tapback labels, and whether the row carries an attachment.
  • Attachments: filename, MIME type, size and times, with the file embedded from the extraction.
  • Chat Threads: identifier, service, style, and participant handles.
  • Deletion Tombstones: the GUIDs Messages keeps in its deleted_* and sync_deleted_* tables.

Every chat.db found is parsed, so a Mac with more than one user account reports each account. message.date is read as nanoseconds above 1e15 and seconds below, so pre-10.13 and modern databases both decode. The stored "~/Library/..." attachment path is rewritten to a "*/Library/..." pattern so the staged copy is matched. attributedBody is not decoded; a text-empty row is flagged in Body Source.

Validated on the public Josh Hickman macOS Big Sur image: 25 messages (one only in the write-ahead log), 5 attachments all embedded, 1 chat. The tombstone tables were empty there, so their schema is confirmed but not their contents.

abrignoni and others added 2 commits September 1, 2026 18:56
…tombstones

Four artifacts from a macOS chat.db: the message table (times, direction,
sender, chat, body, service, tapback), the attachment table with the file
embedded from the extraction, chat threads with participant handles, and the
deletion tombstone tables.

Every chat.db found is parsed, so a Mac with more than one user account reports
each account. message.date is decoded as nanoseconds above 1e15 and seconds
below, so both the modern and pre-10.13 units land correctly. The stored
"~/Library/..." attachment path is rewritten to a "*/Library/..." pattern so
the staged copy is matched and embedded. attributedBody is not decoded; a row
with empty text is flagged in Body Source.

Validated against the public Josh Hickman macOS Big Sur test image: 25 messages
(one recoverable only with the write-ahead log applied), 5 attachments all
embedded, 1 chat. The deletion tombstone tables were empty on that image, so
their schema is confirmed but not their contents.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Move Text ahead of Chat Display Name so the conversation role columns (time,
direction, sender, chat identifier, text) run in the order the data_views block
declares, satisfying check_conversation_column_order. Row tuple reordered to
match; baseline regenerated.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@abrignoni
abrignoni merged commit 4348539 into main Sep 2, 2026
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@abrignoni
abrignoni deleted the feat/imessage-macos branch September 2, 2026 02:44
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