Notes from the project: how backups work, how to recover things, how to leave Apple with your data, and the occasional piece on why we build it this way.
A plain-English tour of Manifest.db, domains, and why some data is there and some isn't. No jargon that doesn't earn its keep.
A quiet guide. Where the voice files live, how to find them, and how to keep them when the phone and the person are both gone.
Counterintuitive take: tick the "Encrypt local backup" box. You get more data, not less.
The list of things Apple won't help you take with you — and how to take them anyway.
We're MIT licensed. Here's what that changes about how you should think about trusting us with your backup.
The whole thread with dates, times and senders, ready to print.
A conversation as one PDF, with its photos, dates and senders.
Back up with Apple Devices or iTunes, then save the conversations as files.
Where Windows keeps the backup folder, and how to open it.
Find them in an old backup, listen, and keep the audio safe.
What actually works, and an honest look at what a backup can hold.
Save a readable archive before the switch, then turn off iMessage.
Most of us start a journal and abandon it. Your phone never did. Why its record is more honest than the one you'd write, and how to read it like a journal.
A longer, more personal piece on what it feels like to finally hold years of your own data in a readable form. Not a how-to. A reflection.
What 17,518 extracted messages revealed when analyzed at scale — patterns the subject couldn't see from inside, and what data-as-mirror can show that introspection can't.