Skyperious

Important Notice

Around 2017, starting from Skype version 8, Skype moved away from its famous peer-to-peer architecture to a client-server system, and started to store conversation history on its own servers only.

Formerly, it used a local SQLite main.db database to store chats and messages, which is what Skyperious was originally created to work with - merging chat histories from different computers into one.

Skyperious still works with existing main.db files, and can also download newer messages from Skype online service. But any changes done to the database no longer affect what is visible in the official Skype program.

Skyperious is a Skype chat history tool.

You can open Skype SQLite databases and work with their contents:

• import messages from Skype online service and Skype export archives
• search across all messages and contacts
• read chat history in full, see chat statistics and word clouds
• export chats as HTML, text or spreadsheet
• view any database table and export their data, fix database corruption
• change, add or delete data in any table
• execute direct SQL queries

and

• synchronize messages in two Skype databases, merging their differences

Additionally, it doubles as a useful database tool for any SQLite file. Also, a command line interface is available with key functions like exporting, searching, syncing, and merging. The graphical version includes a Python console window.

Downloads, help texts, and more screenshots at https://suurjaak.github.io/Skyperious.

Using The Program

Skyperious can look through user directories and detect Skype databases automatically, or you can select specific files or folders. Once added to the database list, a file can be opened for reading, searching and exporting, or compared with another database for merging.

Searching an opened database supports a simple query syntax. You can use keywords to search among specific authors or chats only (from:john, chat:links), or from certain dates only (date:2012, date:2010..2013-06). Search supports wildcards, exact phrases, grouping, excluding, and either-or queries.

Skyperious can log into Skype online service and download and save new messages into the local database file. It can also create a new main.db database from scratch, by downloading all available history.

Skyperious can read chat history archives exported from Skype, and merge their contents into an existing database, or create a new database from their contents.

(Skype export is available in Skype web interface under My account -> Export files and chat history. The result is a .tar archive containing a messages.json file.)

HTML export can download shared photos and embed them in the resulting HTML, if password for the Skype account has been entered in online-page. This can be disabled in File -> Advanced Options -> SharedImageAutoDownload. Image download is also supported in the command-line interface.

In database comparison, you can scan one database for messages not found in the other, and merge all detected messages to the other database. Or you can read and copy specific chats and contacts. You can also merge chat history archives exported from Skype, via Compare and merge -> Select a Skype chat history export archive from your computer.

Skyperious offers a number of options from the command line:

  export FILE [-t format]    export Skype databases as HTML, text or spreadsheet
  search "query" FILE        search Skype databases for messages or data
  sync FILE                  download new messages from Skype online service
  contacts FILE [-t format]  export Skype contacts as HTML, text or spreadsheet
  create FILE [-u user]      create new Skype database, blank or from a Skype source
  merge FILE FILE ...        merge two or more Skype databases into a new database
  diff FILE1 FILE2           compare chat history in two Skype databases
  gui [FILE]                 launch Skyperious graphical program (default option)
  -h [option]                show command line help, for option if specified

Skyperious can be minimized to tray, clicking the tray icon opens a search popup.

The program itself is stand-alone, can work from any directory, and does not need additional installation, Windows installers have been provided for convenience. The installed program can be copied to a USB stick and used elsewhere, same goes for the source code. The command line interface only needs Python to run.

Skyperious has been tested under Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux, and reported to work under OS X and Windows 8. In source code form, it should run wherever Python and the required Python packages are installed.

If running from pip installation, run skyperious from the command-line. If running from straight source code, launch skyperious.sh where shell scripts are supported, or launch skyperious.bat under Windows, or open a terminal to Skyperious src-directory and run python -m skyperious.

Installation

Windows: download and launch the latest setup from https://suurjaak.github.io/Skyperious/downloads.html.

Linux Snap Store: install Skyperious, or run snap install skyperious

Mac/Linux/other: install Python, wxPython, pip, and run pip install skyperious

The pip installation will add the skyperious command to path. For more thorough instructions, see INSTALL.md.

Skyperious has a Dockerfile, see build/README for Docker.md.

Source Dependencies

If running from source code, Skyperious needs Python 3.5+ or Python 2.7, and the following 3rd-party Python packages:

• wxPython 4.0+ (https://wxpython.org/)

The following are also listed in requirements.txt for pip:

• appdirs (https://pypi.org/project/appdirs)
• beautifulsoup4 (https://pypi.org/project/beautifulsoup4)
• ijson (https://pypi.org/project/ijson)
• Pillow (https://pypi.org/project/Pillow)
• pyparsing (https://pypi.org/project/pyparsing)
• six (https://pypi.org/project/six)
• SkPy (https://pypi.org/project/SkPy)
• XlsxWriter (https://pypi.org/project/XlsxWriter)

If wxPython is not available, the command line interface will function regardless.

If other Python libraries are not available, the program will function regardless, only with lesser service - like lacking Excel export or full search syntax. appdirs and six are mandatory.

Attribution

Skyperious includes step, Simple Template Engine for Python, (c) 2012, Daniele Mazzocchio (https://github.com/dotpy/step).

Shared images slideshow in HTML export implemented with jsOnlyLightbox, (c) 2014, Felix Hagspiel (https://github.com/felixhagspiel/jsOnlyLightbox).

Emoticon images in HTML export are property of Skype Limited, (c) 2004-2006, released under the Skype Component License 1.0.

Default avatar icon from: Fancy Avatars, (c) 2009 Brandon Mathis, https://github.com/imathis/fancy-avatars

Several icons from: Fugue Icons, (c) 2010 Yusuke Kamiyamane, https://p.yusukekamiyamane.com

Includes fonts Carlito Regular and Carlito bold, https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Google_Crosextra_Carlito_fonts

Binaries compiled with PyInstaller, https://www.pyinstaller.org

Installers created with Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, https://nsis.sourceforge.io

License

Copyright (c) by Erki Suurjaak. Released as free open source software under the MIT License, see LICENSE.md for full details.