SMS Backup Viewer

This is an Angular-based web app designed to read the XML backup files produced by the Android app SMS Backup & Restore by Ritesh. It is designed to work in modern browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari. This app works locally and your SMS data does not leave your machine.

Quick start

npm install
npm start

Then open http://localhost:4200/.

Note: if ng is not found on your machine, that’s expected unless you installed Angular CLI globally. Use the project scripts (npm start, npm run build, etc.) or npx ng ....

If you build the app (npm run build) and then open the generated dist/.../index.html via file://, your browser will likely block the JS bundles (CORS). To preview the built output, run npm run preview:dist and open http://localhost:8080/.

Large backups / split files

Very large XML backups (especially with MMS media) may be too large for the browser to load/parse as a single file.

If you have a multi-GB backup (e.g. 2+ GB), use the desktop build (Tauri) and load the file by path. Browsers generally cannot handle parsing a multi-GB XML file as a single in-memory string.

• Prefer exporting SMS only / no media when possible.
• If you need to split your export, you can select multiple .xml files at once in the SMS loader — they will be merged into a single combined message list.

IndexedDB Storage

Once loaded, messages are automatically stored in your browser's IndexedDB for fast access. This means:

• You don't need to re-parse the XML file each time you open the app
• Messages load instantly on subsequent visits
• You can clear stored data from the Settings page if needed
• Storage is local to your browser — your data never leaves your machine

Features

• Load SMS backup files produced by the Android app SMS Backup & Restore by Ritesh
• International support (non-latin character) and emoji support
• MMS support
• VCF support
• Export messages and contacts to CSV
• Export MMS media embedded in message HTML (via CSV export including bodyHtml)
• Export MMS media as separate files (ZIP export)
• IndexedDB persistence - Messages are automatically stored in IndexedDB for fast re-access without re-parsing XML
• Virtual scrolling - Efficient rendering of large message lists for improved performance
• Toast notifications - User-friendly feedback for actions and errors
• Logging and diagnostics - Built-in logging system for troubleshooting
• Desktop app (Tauri) - Native desktop application with enhanced file handling capabilities
• Join backups tool - CLI and GUI utilities to merge multiple SMS backup XML files (see tools/join-backups)

Join Backups Tool

If you need to merge multiple SMS backup XML files into a single file, use the join-backups tool located in tools/join-backups/.

Options:

• CLI: Command-line tool for scripted merging
• GUI (web): Browser-based interface at tools/join-backups/gui/index.html
• GUI (desktop): Tauri desktop app for the merge tool

See tools/join-backups/README.md for detailed usage instructions.

Issues

If you encounter issues, please add them to the issues section.

Roadmap

• Continued performance improvements for very large backups
• Additional export formats
• Request any features/improvements in the issues section

Development

See DEVELOPING.md for development workflows.

Want a desktop app? This repo includes a Tauri wrapper; see the Desktop (Tauri) section in DEVELOPING.md.

Note about emoji and text handling in this app (mostly for devs)

SMS Backup & Restore saves emojis and other special characters in a very interesting way.

Likely, it goes back to how characters are encoded in SMS.

• If all characters in the SMS are English + a few extra, then it essentially stores them all as ASCII*
• If even one of the characters in the SMS is beyond the base character set, then the entire message is stored as UTF-16*

*Not actually ASCII or UTF-16. There are GSM semi-equivalents. Of course it's not easy.

License

SMS Backup Viewer is made available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for details.