Changelog

Archives are versioned separately from the app. An export made by any version stays readable: the JSON schema and manifest are at version 1, and a change that breaks an existing archive would be a new schema version, never a silent edit to this one.

1.0.6 (2026-08-20)

• Message Album can now recover attachments that Messages removed from your Mac to save space. In the attachments section of the backup screen, choose “Check this Mac for recoverable copies”: anything still sitting in Messages’ own caches is copied back and included in this and future backups. Your Messages library is only ever read, never changed.
• A new guide, How to Get Your Messages, explains the two ways to bring a conversation onto this Mac and says plainly what each one does and does not get you.
• Corrected the advice shown when a conversation has attachments that are not on this Mac. Earlier versions pointed at a “Download attachments” command in the conversation’s info panel, which macOS Messages does not offer.
• A backup that turns out to contain no messages now says so directly, and what to try next, instead of reporting a missing database.
• A new colour in dark mode, clearer against a dark background than the previous violet. Albums you have already exported are unchanged.

1.0.5 (2026-08-18)

• You can now export a conversation whose attachments are larger than your Mac’s free disk space; each attachment is streamed to your chosen location instead of needing room for the whole archive at once.
• When a conversation has attachments that live only in iCloud, the setup screen tells you how many and how to bring them down before backing up, instead of quietly leaving them out.
• An iPhone or iPad you plug in that this Mac has no backup of is now named in the source list, with a note on what to do.

1.0.4 (2026-08-17)

• The folder you are saving to is now shown in full, so two folders with the same name are no longer indistinguishable.
• Running two copies of Message Album at once can no longer disturb an export that is already in progress.
• Message Album now re-checks its licence occasionally. It stays working if you are offline or the check cannot be made.

1.0.3 (2026-08-17)

• Attachments whose names contain a “#”, a “?” or a “%” now open correctly from inside an album. Previously those characters broke the link, so the file was in the folder but the album could not show it.
• Message Album now uses its own colour throughout, instead of the system accent, so the app matches its icon.

1.0.2 (2026-08-17)

• Fixes a case where Message Album could not be given permission to read your messages. If you opened the app straight from the disk image, macOS was running it from a temporary location where the permission never sticks. It now offers to move itself to your Applications folder.
• The setup screen now says two permissions rather than one, and explains what the second one (Contacts) is for and that declining it is fine.
• Closing the last window now quits the app instead of leaving it running with nothing on screen.
• Hardened how attachments are located, so a Messages library that has been tampered with cannot make the app read files elsewhere on your Mac.
• Corrected the German translation, which mixed formal and informal address.

1.0.1 (2026-08-17)

• Message Album can now update itself. Choose Check for Updates from the Message Album menu, or let it look on its own. It asks before installing anything, and every update is checked against a signature before it runs.
• Hardened how iPhone and iPad backups are read. A backup that has been tampered with is now rejected outright instead of being trusted to name its own files, so it cannot reach files outside itself.
• Decrypted working files from an encrypted backup are now cleared at launch as well as on quit. Previously a crash or a force quit could leave them behind on disk.

1.0 (2026-08-16)

• Export one conversation at a time to an offline website, JSON, Markdown and optional CSV, with a SHA-256 checksum manifest.
• Read from the Mac’s own Messages library, or from any Finder-made iPhone or iPad backup stored on this Mac, encrypted or not.
• Resolve names and contact photos for one-to-one conversations from the Contacts app on this Mac.
• Clone byte-identical attachments on repeat exports so a second export of a large conversation adds almost no disk on APFS.