FAQ

Windows: C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\
OSX: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/

If you want just your messages, you only need to copy one single file, which can be found in your iTunes backup folder (see above), and that is the file

3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28 in the folder 3d

If you want your call log, you need to copy the file 5a4935c78a5255723f707230a451d79c540d2741 from the folder 54. (For older iOS versions it's called 2b2b0084a1bc3a5ac8c27afdf14afb42c61a19ca.

If your backup folder does not contain the backup file of the message database, you haven't received or sent any messages since the last time you created a backup.

Please check the older backup folders, starting with the one that has the most recent timestamp at the end, and search for the file in those.

If you don't have any other backup folders, and are absolutely sure that the file you are looking for is nowhere to be found (e.g. if you deleted those older backups), you can just send a new messages to someone (or call someone, if you need for the call log database),
and then create a new backup, which should then contain the file you need to copy.

If you are using an older version of iOS, the call logs file is called 2b2b0084a1bc3a5ac8c27afdf14afb42c61a19ca.

This is a very strange issue, but luckily it's easy to fix: Just rename the database file(s) to something other than the original/suggested filenames, like MyMessagesFile.

This prevents the app from finding the file automatically, so it will then ask you to select it manually - after which everything should work as expected.

In over 10 years of supporting this app, there hasn't been a single support request for this error message where the reason wasn't either a encrypted backup, or a completely wrong file. Please double-check the encryption setting for your backups in iTunes, and/or do a search for the exact filename in your backup folder.

No, the app only supports the plain text body of both SMS/MMS and iMessages. For a detailed explanation, please have a look at the next question.

If you receive a SMS message or plain-text iMessage, your iPhone takes the text body and saves it (together with some metadata) into its message database. This also happens when
you receive a MMS message (or iMessage with attachments), but when saving the text body and metadata into the message database, it also downloads the attachments and saves them into
a specific folder on your iPhones filesystem, and then puts the path to those attachments into a separate table in the message database.
This means we now have the text body and the information about its attachments in the database - but we don't have the attachment files themselves. When you create a backup of your
iPhone, those attachments get also backed up to your computer, but each one as a separate files with a cryptic filename that is based on the path of the file on your phone.
It would theoretically be possible to also import the attachments, but that would require you to copy your whole iTunes backup folder to your Android phone, as it is impossible to
predict which files from your backup are message attachments until iSMS2droid actually opens the message database and starts importing.

I am thinking about making it a two-step process: first step scans the database for attachments and generates a list of additional files you would need to copy, and the second step
would be the actual import of the messages including attachments - after you copied the additional files.
Unfortunately i'm not in possesion of an iPhone anymore, so i can't really fully develop this feature, as it would require extensive testing with real backups.

Android does not support group messages, so all messages from a group chats you had on your iPhone are imported like direct conversations with the respective sender/recipient.

My testing has shown that a good estimate for the import speed is 50 messages per second, at least on a recent (<=2 years) device. This means you should be able to import 100.000
messages in 30-45 minutes. Please keep in mind that any other activity during the import will greatly affect this number, especially any apps that use lots of memory or access the
storage. Any security apps or anti-virus scanners should also be disabled during the import, as they will most likely try to inspect every single message, which will slow down the
process considerably.

If you are using a Samsung device: Samsung has fiddled with their version of Android, causing it to crash when just reading the count of messages. Newer (2017) Samsung devices seem to be working fine again, so if it's working for you, just ignore the warning.

While the app has some functionality to detect encrypted files and warn the user about this accordingly, some device manufacturers like to mess with Android too much, which causes the encryption detection to fail, resulting in an app crash.

So if the app crashes for you, the first thing you should do is triple-check that you have definitely disabled backup encryption, and that the file you want to import is from a backup that was created after you disabled the encryption.

If you are either using Samsung device with a not-so-recent Android version, or don't use a Samsung device but the app crashes anyways, please use the Online Converter.

Your messages are most likely not really missing, you just don't see them - yet. The import process writes those messages to a database, and the Android messaging app then reads them
from this database to display them. The bigger the database, the longer it takes for the messaging app to load them, and that's why Android does something called "indexing the database".
You don't need to know the technical details, but it's a process that is ran for each new message, and it takes a while. Once the messages are indexed, the messaging app can show them
with nearly no delay. If you are receiving or sending messages, this indexing happens in the fraction of a second, you shouldn't notice it at all. But as we are writing hundreds, thousands,
or for some users even hundredths of thousand messages to the database, this indexing takes substantially longer, and the messaging app will only show those messages that have already
been indexed - and that looks like there are messages missing, even if they are in the database.

If it's been more than a couple of minutes (or an hour, if you imported a lot of messages) since the import, and you still don't see all messages, you can try to reboot your phone and
then check the messaging app once it has started up again. If you see at least some new messages then, give it some more time to do the indexing, don't just reboot it again right away.
Let your phone work through the database, the less you use your phone do during this process, the faster they will show up.

If all fails, you can check if deleting the Messages (not iSMS2droid) app data helps. To do this, either:

- go to Settings -> Apps and Notifications -> Messages (or SMS/MMS), or
- long-tap your Messages launcher icon -> App-Details

then tap on "Storage" and select "Clear data". This should not delete any of the messages, but only make it completely rebuild the database. Before doing this, you should really have followed the previous instructions and already created a backup of your existing messages, so i'm not gonna mention the importance of doing that again.

Please see the above question, "The app crashes when i select the database file!".

If you are using a FairPhone: disable PrivacyImpact

iSMS2droid requires at least Android "Lollipop" 5.0, which was released in 2014. If your device is running an Android version older than that, iSMS2droid will simply not work,
and there's nothing that can be done about it, except updating your device to Android "Lollipop" 5.0 or higher. You shouldn't be buying a device with such an old Android version
anyways, as the incompatibility of iSMS2droid will be the least of your worries.

If for whatever reason you absolutely must import your messages on such an old device, please use the Online Converter.

The app's name is a concatenation of the phrase iPhone SMS to Android (Converter, formerly).

Apple has decided that the Call Log should only be backed up to iCloud when you are using unecrypted local backups.

It will still be created locally when you do encrypted backups, but those are not usable with iSMS2droid.

That means effectively you won't be able to import your Call Log if you are using iOS 13 (or newer).

You can find more information here.

No, iSMS2droid only <strong>adds</strong> messages from the backup file to your existing message, anything that was there before will also still be there after the import. Nothing will be overwritten, nothing will be replaced, you keep all your previous messages.

This also applies to the "Remove Messages" function: it will only remove those messages that have been imported by iSMS2droid itself.