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 and export their data
change, add or delete data in any table
execute direct SQL queries

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.

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 browsing, 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 int the local database file. It can also create a new main.db database from scratch, by downloading all available history.

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 copy all detected messages to the other database. Or you can browse and copy specific chats and contacts.

Skyperious can also merge chat history exported from Skype into an existing main.db, via Compare and merge -> Select a Skype chat history export archive from your computer.
Skype export is available in Skype web interface under My account -> Export files and chat history.

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
  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)

More information on search syntax and command line interface.

Skyperious can be minimized to tray, clicking the tray icon opens a message 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, go to Skyperious directory, and launch skyperious.sh where shell scripts are supported, or launch skyperious.bat under Windows, or open a terminal and run python -m skyperious.

Attribution

Skyperious has been built using the following open-source software:

Python, www.python.org
wxPython, wxpython.org
appdirs, pypi.org/project/appdirs
beautifulsoup4, pypi.org/project/beautifulsoup4
ijson, pypi.python.org/pypi/ijson
Pillow, pypi.org/project/Pillow
pyparsing, pypi.org/project/pyparsing
six, pypi.org/project/six
SkPy, pypi.org/project/SkPy
step, Simple Template Engine for Python, github.com/dotpy/step
XlsxWriter, pypi.org/project/XlsxWriter

Binaries compiled with PyInstaller, www.pyinstaller.org.

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

License

(The MIT License)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

The software is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and noninfringement. In no event shall the authors or copyright holders be liable for any claim, damages or other liability, whether in an action of contract, tort or otherwise, arising from, out of or in connection with the software or the use or other dealings in the software.