TL;DR
i have yet to find a chat app, that allows easy export (or transfer) of chats.
I dumped Viber and WhatsApp and then I found out I’m being ‘held hostage’
I still haven’t found a way to export messages from (my dormant) #Viber account. Every few years I search for solutions that would allow me to export messages, without success.
#WhatsApp (also my dormant account) surprisingly allows export (as .txt + images), but only per person, not all at once. At least that.
Meta #Messenger? (also dormant, I quit FB several years ago) Didn’t find the option to export the messages.
I still didn’t delete those dormant accounts, because the chat history still hold some messages with emotional / sentimental value. For example, of people who passed or I lost contact.
Not allowing export is very effective way to hold users as hostages. Nobody would bother to switch to Signal, for example, for 2 reasons: network of contacts and possibility to export chat history.
As it seems, Signal isn’t any better
As happy user of #Signal, I was quite surprised when I found out that I can not easily export message history from it. Or am I missing something again?
I found one Python script1 that promises it can export chat history, but I haven’t try it yet. I am skeptical to give access to an external app to my unencrypted messages. What if it sends them to some server? It would be the best, if the app itself allowed exporting (like WhatsApp). Does anyone has experiences with it?
A question: did any of the readers found sensible / working solution for exporting messages from Viber, Messenger and Signal?