Your year in yapping
Like Spotify Wrapped, but for iMessage. Everything is secure. Nothing is ever uploaded. Nobody will ever see your messages.
Made for Mac. Your messages live in a file that only exists on your computer.
Three steps. Takes a minute.
-
1
Open Finder, then click Go in the menu bar
It's at the very top of your screen, between View and Window. In the menu that drops down, click Go to Folder… at the bottom.
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2
Paste this in and press return
~/Library/MessagesA folder opens. Inside it is a file called
chat.db. -
3
Drag
chat.dbonto the box belowIt's about a gigabyte. Dragging it here doesn't move it, copy it or change it, and it never leaves your computer.
Drop chat.db here
or click to choose it — nothing leaves this tab
I can't find it, or I'd rather not type anything
There's a mouse-only route. Open Finder, hold down the option key
and click Go in the menu bar. A folder called Library appears
in the list that's normally hidden. Click it, open Messages inside,
and drag chat.db onto the box above.
If you see several files whose names start with chat.db, you
want the one called exactly chat.db — not
chat.db-wal or chat.db-shm.
If macOS refuses to let you drag it, copy it to your Desktop first and use that copy instead.
Is this actually private?
Yes. Your messages never leave your laptop — this page does all the counting inside your own browser, the same way a calculator app works offline, so there's nowhere for anyone else to see them.
The longer version: there's no server behind this page and no account to sign into. After the page finishes loading it makes no network requests at all — you can check that yourself in DevTools → Network. Your file is read into memory in this tab, counted, and forgotten when you close it.