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bepaald
signalbackup-tools
C++2021–2026
bepaald / signalbackup-tools

signalbackup-tools

Tool to work with Signal Backup files.

Data & DatabasesMobile & Desktop
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
13Distinct people
15Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
1.4KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Tool to work with Signal Backup files.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year15 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2021-01-07 18:43:32 UTC to 2026-10-31 13:46:04 UTC.

02462021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments20212022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments20232024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 2 submissions, 2 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 0 submissions, 6 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC422
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC606
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202

What Hacker News says

15 sources
mholt·Oct 7, 2025
Great comment, thanks for the questions. > unless it's a machine at home, This is, in fact, the intended model. The problem with any other model, AFAIK, is that someone else has access to your data unless I implement an encrypted live database, like with homomorphic encryption, but even then, I'm sure at some places it would have to be decrypted in memory in places (like, transcoding videos or encoding images, for starters), and the physical owner of the machine will always have access to that. I just don't think any other way of doing it is really feasible to truly preserve your privacy. I am likely wrong, but if so, I also imagine it's very tedious, nuanced, error-prone, and restrictive. (Or maybe I'm just totally wrong!) > - Could index and storage backend be decoupled, so that I can host my photos etc. elsewhere and, in particular, p
Read the rest
revent data duplication? I know this is contentious for some, but part of the point is to duplicate/copy your data into the timeline. It acts as a backup, and it ensures consistency, reliability, and availability. Apps like PhotoStructure do what you describe -- and do a good job of indexing external content. I just think that's going to be hard to compel in Timelinize. > Support for importing Polarsteps trips, and for importing Signal backups (e.g. via https://github.com/bepaald/signalbackup-tools ) would be nice! Agreed! I played with Signal exports for a while but the format changed enough that it was difficult to rely on this as a data source. Especially since it's not just obvious what changes, it's encryption so it's kind of a black box. That said, anyone is welcome to contribute more data sources. I will even have an import API at some point, so the data sources don't have to be compiled in. Other scripts or programs could push data to Timelinize. Just to reiterate, one of the main goals of Timelinize is to have your data. It may mean some duplication, but I'm OK with that. Storage is getting cheap enough, and even if it's expensive, it's worth it.
In Show HN: Timelinize – Privately organize your own data from everywhere, locally
codethief·Oct 7, 2025
This looks really cool and like something I've been subconsciously looking for! A couple thoughts & ideas: - Given the sensitivity of the data, I would be rather scared to self-host this, unless it's a machine at home, behind a Wireguard/Tailscale setup. I would love to see this as an E2E-encrypted application, similarly to Ente.io. - Could index and storage backend be decoupled, so that I can host my photos etc. elsewhere and, in particular, prevent data duplication? (For instance, if you already self-host Immich or Ente.io and you also set up backups, it'd be a waste to have Timelinize store a separate copy of the photos IMO.) I know, this is not entirely trivial to achieve but for viewing & interacting with different types of data there are already tons of specialized applications out there. Timelinized can't possibly replace all of th
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em. - Support for importing Polarsteps trips, and for importing Signal backups (e.g. via https://github.com/bepaald/signalbackup-tools ) would be nice!
In Show HN: Timelinize – Privately organize your own data from everywhere, locally
codethief·Sep 8, 2025
Hi Greyson! > But this new thing is all cross-platform, and in the near future we'll even be making our local backups cross-platform. This is excellent news! Will there also be official documentation on the backup format, potentially even official tooling like signalbackup-tools[0] to access/parse backups offline? I'm asking because, having used Signal/TextSecure for 10 years now, my backups are worth a lot to me (obviously) and there have been times when I would have liked to mine & process my backed-up data. (Extract media from conversations in an automated manner, build a more elaborate search, …) My backups have also reached the point where they are so big (15-20 GB) that it's starting to become difficult to conduct a backup each day and sync it successfully before it gets overridden 48h later. So unless I start using the new "cloud b
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ackup" feature[1] (which I'm not sure I want to), at some point I will have to archive my existing Signal conversations somewhere and start from scratch (i.e. reset the app). In that case, it would be nice if there was an officially documented way to merge & read new and old backups offline (on my desktop), similar to what [0] provides right now. [0]: https://github.com/bepaald/signalbackup-tools [1]: EDIT: Actually, it seems like the new cloud backup feature doesn't support incremental backups, either? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45175387
In Signal Secure Backups
codethief·Sep 8, 2025
Couldn't you re-register your old phone temporarily, just for the purpose of taking the backup¹, and later re-register your current phone? (In fact, once your old phone is registered, turn on airplane mode, and you should be able to re-register your current phone right away without affecting your old phone and the backup you're making there.) Alternatively, would it be an option to get a throwaway number you could register your old phone under? Finally, once you have the backup, use something like https://github.com/bepaald/signalbackup-tools to merge your old phone's backup with your current phone's backup, and then reinstall Signal on your current phone from that merged backup. (Disclaimer: I have never actually done this before but signalbackup-tools has been around for a long time and the developer seems to be very responsive.) ¹) I'm
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talking about the traditional way of backing up Signal conversation data to an encrypted archive here, not the feature discussed in the OP.
In Signal Secure Backups

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