CLcl3misch·Jul 2, 2025Submission
signal-export: Export your Signal chats to Markdown files with attachments
3 points · Open discussioncarderne
signal-export
Python2021–2025
carderne / signal-export
signal-export
Export your Signal chats to markdown files with attachments
3Distinct people
4Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
809GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Export your Signal chats to markdown files with attachments
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
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 year4 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2021-01-08 17:20:37 UTC to 2025-07-02 07:44:54 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
What Hacker News says
4 sourcesSignal perhaps does not allow you to export your message history through the front door, however decrypting and exporting your message history is relatively low effort.
You messages are stored in encrypted SQLite3 database. The Signal encryption key is in
~/Library/Application\ Support/Signal/config.json
in plain text. If you have SQLCipher (https://github.com/sqlcipher/sqlcipher) compiled you can decrypt your Signal database:
Navigate to
~/Library/Application\ Support/Signal/sql/
and type
sqlcipher db.sqlite
sqlite> PRAGMA key = "x'<your_key_here>'";
sqlite> .schema
and query away.
Of course there is a Python package to automate all of this here:
https://github.com/carderne/signal-export
This exports your message history as markdown and HTML files for your convenience and it will do incremental exports as well.
Fo
Read the rest
r iOS the same holds true, considering iOS has had a jail break most of its existence.
So, in retrospect your Signal messages are only as secure as computers of the people you talk to and of course your own device.
I would go a step further and assert that there is no such thing as secure communication.
This [0] (I made this) will let you get your messages out into Markdown/HTML + attachments, but I'm pretty sure there's no way to get them back onto your phone yet.
[0] https://github.com/carderne/signal-export
In Extracting WhatsApp Messages from an iOS BackupIt's super hacky but this [0] bit of code I adapted from some other hacky code will let you export to MarkDown/HTML. No hope of getting the messages back on my phone, but at least I have an archive of messages and media.
[0] https://github.com/carderne/signal-export
In Signal WhatsApp Chats Import