Does anyone know of a way to archive all messages in Android/Google Messages maybe older than a certain timeframe?
I have 100s of old conversations spanning back several years. I finally decided it would be nice to archive (not delete) ones that aren’t relevant at the moment. The only way I figured to do this is swipe each conversation one by one.
Is there a faster way to just do it all in one swoop?
Edit: I wrote a quick script to do it via manipulating the Google Messages webui: https://sh.itjust.works/comment/4646349 Worked for me!
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https://www.androidpolice.com/back-up-android-text-sms-messages/
Read the whole article, it’s actually pretty good. It outlines 3 methods:
- Google’s Android backups: this is the “standard” backup method
- SMS Backup Plus: convert your texts to Gmail messages for a long-term, searchable archive (this one seems more like what you want)
- SMS Backup & Restore: Store your messages in a backup file that can be restored later as needed
Thanks folks for ideas, but I was talking about just basically ‘hiding’ the conversations by pushing them to the ‘archive’ folder. (I already backup with SMS Backup/Restore).
I decided to write a quick/dirty (no guarantees) tampermonkey script to do exactly what I wanted. If anyone else needs something similar, they can take a look here: https://gist.github.com/csm10495/47c900978866770cdff934f6cd783665
I used to do this with Titanium Backup. I don’t know if that still works though.
There’s also MyBackup Pro that can take message backups and restore them. I have over 17k messages going back multiple phones over the years, I always use MBP to restore them in a new phone when I upgrade, it’s always been perfect.
When Android is old enough, yep. Android 13 needs an update of Titanium backup for it to work again. Alas, TB didn’t get an update since '19 so I’m using neo backup now. (Haven’t tested message restores yet)
