Bromidrosis: The Collected Correspondence of Stinkfoot

December 18, 2017 12:10 PM

I've recently grown concerned that, given the scattered and digital nature of my papers, scholars of the future will struggle to comprehensively compile my correspondence. I think it'd be a nice gesture to get some of those things organized in advance. To that end, I'd like to back up all of my iMessage, SMS, and GroupMe messages from two iPhones (4S and 6S) to my computer (Linux Mint). I'd prefer to be able to export to PDF and retain images as well. Looking for recommendations!

This thread mentions CopyTrans and PhoneView, but I'm not sure which one will work (if either) with Mint.

posted by stinkfoot to Technology (3 answers total)

Response by poster: Sorry - I was kidding about the scholars/correspondence thing. I'm not actually important or famous yet!

I just want a backup of all my texts!
posted by stinkfoot at 12:36 PM on December 18, 2017

I was recently asked to export (backup) iMessages. I was looking for a program that would write file formats which would be easy to open at a later date (i.e., CSV or PDF). iTunes backups don't really fit the bill...

All of this to say that iExplorer worked well. It doesn't look like they have a Linux version, so you'd have to use a Mac or PC. Unfortunately, it's not free -- a quick search did not reveal any free alternative.
posted by vert canard at 5:08 AM on December 19, 2017

This blog post looks promising, although I'd be shocked if there isn't a better way to do it in bulk without a little hacking. That said, especially since it doesn't seem like a particularly technically complex task, you might be able to run iExplorer in Wine.
posted by aspersioncast at 11:54 AM on December 19, 2017