iPhone Backup Extractor
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Hot on the heels of yesterday's update, we're shipping another one today. What's the big news? Support for direct-from-device Screen Time passcode recovery on Windows. We released support for this on macOS the other week, but as of today, we're back to parity across platforms. Oh, and we included a minor macOS tweak, too. Let us know how you get on. We're all ears. 👂 Or should that be eyes or keyboards? We're not sure.

• Feature Screen Time recovery over USB (or Wi-Fi) direct from device.
• Feature The "Info" pane now shows a lot of extra data for iOS devices, including motherboard serial (mlbserial), ECID, baseband cert and chip values, full bootloader information, device MAC addresses, platform and model numbers.
• Fix Don't show an error message on macOS if iTunes hasn't been initialised and can't be used for USB access.

Today we're releasing a number of enhancements to message extraction and preview, and introducing our "Forensics mode".

"Forensic" mode can be toggled on or off in the preferences. Essentially, when enabled, we'll include additional forensic metadata in message previews and exports. If you just want to see how content would be on your phone, it won't help you. But if you want to track down exactly when or where something was sent, or use iPhone Backup Extractor for evidentiary purposes, it's what you want.

• Feature New "Forensics mode", enabling iPhone Backup Extractor to include a much greater amount of information in previews and exports. Enabling it will change timestamps to verbose format -- including timezone -- and disable various regional-specific settings.
• Improvement Conversations will now display the name of the contact and their phone number, even for named group chats.
• Improvement Chats are now styled much more closely to how the iPhone shows them, with various colour, sizing and ordering changes. This affects both exports (which were pretty close!) and previews (which were less so).
• Improvement PDF exports now include more information on which version of iPhone Backup Extractor was used to create the export.
• Fix Sometimes images wouldn't be shown in HTML exports as a consequence of HTML DOM magic. This is now sorted out.

We didn't put out a release last week as we were knee-deep in a new feature: Screen Time passcode recovery direct from device. Today's release of 7.6.5.1459 makes this live for all macOS users. We normally release updates for both platforms at the same time, but Windows is going to catch up very soon. Watch this space. Oh — and please let us how you get on with it!

• Feature Screen Time recovery over USB (or Wi-Fi) direct from device on macOS.
• Feature The "Info" pane now shows a lot of extra data for iOS devices, including motherboard serial (mlbserial), ECID, baseband cert and chip values, full bootloader information, device MAC addresses, platform and model numbers.

Having seen how upset people are about Slack's new icon, we're all the more delighted about the positive feedback we got when we refreshed ours last year. This week's release has a handful of minor fixes and changes. It's a smaller release, as we're simultaneously working on a rather neat new feature which we hope to have in testing next week. See you then? 💪

• Fix Fixed grouping of group SMS conversations, both in export and preview.
• Fix Fixed the names of SMS conversations on macOS to include the contact name rather than just the number.
• Fix If the application runs into problems, it now behaves a little better on macOS 10.9 through 10.11. Newer versions are already fine.
• Fix Checkboxes in the app are now blue in Windows. This wasn't in the plan, but it was bugging us so much we had to sneak it in there.

For our first release of 2019 we've got a lovely new feature to share: in-built preview of calendar events. We hope you like it!

• Feature New built-in calendar entry previewer.
• Fix We sorted out an edge-case where calendar entries could be out by a minute.
• Fix We improved handling of daylight saving (DST) changes within an event.
• Fix A number of tweaks to spacing, graphics and colouring in the interface, both on Windows and macOS.

We've had our year-end party, worn our Christmas jumpers in the office, and planned a few getaways. What's next? Ah yes: iPhone Backup Extractor 7.6.4.1373. It's out today, and it'll be our last pre-Christmas release, and likely also the last one of 2018. We hope you like it. 🎅 Users, thanks for your support and all the kind messages you share with us.

• Improvement We've enhanced our contacts export to include embedded contact photos, along with birthday and social media details. The default contacts app that comes with Windows 10 won't correctly display embedded photos, but if you use a different app for contacts, or view them on a Mac or iPhone, you'll see they're just grand. We'll revisit the Windows issue in due course.
• Improvement We've made a number of enhancements our Preferences dialog, the most obvious being that we've made default export format choices on your behalf for Messages, Locations and Calendar data. When export data we pick a sensible format, rather than asking you each time if you'd like HTML or PDF. If you'd like to change the choice, you can do so in preferences. Also, if you find yourself compulsively pressing the ESC key to close windows, you'll see it now works.

This week's update is brought to you from a combination of London winter and Californian sun. ☀️ What's new in today's release?

• Feature Holy smokes! iPhone Backup Extractor will now automatically spot new backups as they're created, and remove backups from its list as they're removed. Feedback on this feature is especially appreciated.
• Feature We've added an Open default backup folder menu item under the "Utilities" menu. If you can't find your iTunes backup folder, the easiest way is to download iPhone Backup Extractor and let it untangle the different places your backup could be. It's in the free edition, of course.
• Improvement iOS filesystems are case-sensitive. Some Windows and macOS filesystems aren't. That means it can be impossible to represent the contents of an iOS backup as-is where there are case-sensitivity collisions. Some apps store their data in this way, and that has meant that a pure solution -- writing files according to their correct name when exporting -- means that some of the data overwrote other parts. We now proactively detect and handle this. Still, if you want 1:1 veracity in your exports, export to a case-sensitive filesystem or DMG mount.
• Fix We correctly show WhatsApp contact names in preview mode. They'd disappeared in prior releases, although they've been correct in exports. Sorry.

We're excited to release version 7.6.3.1320 of iPhone Backup Extractor today. After last week's speed enhancement, we've rolled 12 other improvements or fixes into this one. A number of them are behind the scenes, but let's take a look at some of the most visible ones:

• Improvement Added in a roundup of minor enhancements for Hike, photos, recordings, WeChat and WhatsApp extraction.
• Improvement We've made iPhone Backup Extractor 3MB smaller for Windows users. Aidan wistfully remembers the time we used to boast the whole thing was under 100KB. 🧐
• Improvement Removed the word "Extract" from each type of data on the overview, making the interface clearer. That's a hundred bytes of that 3MB saving accounted for!
• Improvement Introduced a cache that'll help speed up extraction of messages, installed apps, video and voicemail.
• Improvement We've rearranged the order of the toolbar buttons we introduced last month, making it more intuitive for users to get started. We also removed images from those buttons. Who needs 'em?
• Improvement We made a number of minor fixes to the "about" screen.
• Fix We've updated the interstitial text for the sample backup to reflect reality. Sorry, we'd let that copy get a little outdated.
• Fix We've updated the text in our lovely yellow iCloud call-to-action bar.
• Fix We restored the broken alignment of some of the text on the welcome screen.

It's not been a week since the last iPhone Backup Extractor update, but we're already back for more. Today's release includes a significant WhatsApp performance enhancement, a stability fix for Windows, and a host of minor enhancements and fixes.

• Improvement WhatsApp recovery is now approximately 100x faster. Crumbs.
• Improvement Where we describe the backup's format on the "Info" pane, we describe it as the iOS version in which that format was first introduced. That means we'd describe a secure iOS 11 backup as "10.2+ format". That confused people, so we've added a separate "Firmware" field to make it explicit which iOS version created the backup.
• Fix One of our security mechanisms on Windows was leading the app to close unexpectedly in unusual situations. We've sorted that out. Sorry!
• Fix Almost all of the links in the app are now shown in the same consistent blue colour. We've still got a few stragglers around the place. Let us know if you catch one.
• Fix The "Info" pane erroneously referred to "internal name" as "internal model". Infernal. And fixed.
• Fix We fixed an small typo on the welcome screen and a few other bits and pieces.
• Fix Fixed a graphical issue on the "Create account" window on Windows.
• Fix Cleaned up some things behind the scenes in the macOS version.

In our last release we simplified how we show data for iTunes backups and iCloud accounts, and today's release with more ease-of-use changes. How do you like the new welcome screen? ✍️

• Feature Options for recovering the Screen Time and restrictions passcode is now shown very clearly in the overview.
• Improvement Overhauled welcome screen to help new users get started and orient themselves, and to highlight how we work online in some cases.
• Fix We now correctly identify the underlying backup format behind iOS 11 and 12 backups.
• Fix We've fixed a bug where a failure could lead to us popping up the "contact us" dialog more than once. We're keen to hear from you, but popping it up once is enough!
• Fix Madness was ensuing in some cases where users had case-sensitive filesystems on macOS. Not anymore!
• Fix It's a small change, but an important one: we now correctly locale-format the number of days since a backup was taken. At least in Blighty, 1000 is 1,000.
• Fix We do more clever stuff behind the scenes to share code between our desktop apps.

We've had our heads down over the last couple of weeks preparing for a handful of updates to both our app and the API that powers it. Today brings with it the release of some of those new bits! We hope you enjoy them -- and as ever -- we'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback.

• Feature Added "Info" tab for iCloud accounts and backups, joining the tab that was already available for iTunes backups.
• Improvement Simplified overview description for all types of resource: iTunes backups, iCloud accounts, iCloud backups, etc. We now show less information at the top of the overview screen, helping you to focus on what is important. All the information we used to show is still available, of course: it's shown under the "Info" tab, along with a whole lot more.
• Fix We've fixed an irritating edge-case that was preventing some users from recovering their Screen Time passcodes. Sorry for the inconvenience. 👩‍⚕️
• Fix We weren't correctly identifying some iOS devices when shown in the app. And now we are. How's that?

In our second release of the week we're shipping a little update to show iCloud service status on our iCloud login window. It's a handy feature that we'll build on in future.

• Feature iCloud status is now shown on the iCloud login window.

We love shipping new features, and we've got something special for you today: our Screen Time passcode recovery wizard. You'll find it under Utilities > Recover Screen Time / restrictions passcode.

• Feature Our new Screen Time passcode recovery wizard is out. We hope you like it! Let us know. 👷‍♀️
• Fix iPhone Backup Extractor will no longer crash if your /System/Fonts folder doesn't exist. Why that would happen, we don't know. But the app now handles it.

This is a minor update, primarily for the benefit of Windows users.

• Fix We've updated some of the text in our Screen Time recovery feature, fixing a typo and ensuring it's clear that iPhone Backup Extractor can do it! 💪
• Improvement After iPhone Backup Extractor's Mac users got the new logo in the last release, its Windows users are getting it today. Lucky you!

Today we're releasing a minor update for our macOS users, fixing a curious issue where parts of the app infrequently disappeared

• Fix We've fixed an unusual issue where parts of the app (like the previews) sometimes weren't visible, and had to be clicked again to work. Why click twice? Click once. This build fixes that. Sorry!
• Improvement iPhone Backup Extractor's logo refresh has landed first on Mac. Crisper, fresher colours on your dock. Feedback is appreciated. 👩‍🎨

We're hugely excited about the upcoming iOS 12 and macOS Mojave. Today's update includes a extra features for both of these, on top of the support we already released. See you at the Apple event later today! 👋

• Feature Recovery of iOS 12's parental control Screen Time passcodes when you forget them, alongside our existing support for the restrictions passcode. This feature is free for all of our existing customers.
• Improvement macOS Mojave includes sensible protection for system files, including iOS backups. iPhone Backup Extractor now explains what you need to do to grant it access to read your backups.
• Fix A handful of minor tweaks and fixes to improve performance under macOS Mojave... more to come here!

We're starting September with a new release with a few neat bits and pieces.

• Improvement Apple made a series of substantial changes to iCloud over the last month or so. Users with older versions of iPhone Backup Extractor will have found our iCloud support continued to work -- as we made a number of server-side -- but we've made a few tweaks to make that smoother in this update.
• Improvement We've made a few minor changes to our visual identity in this release. There's more to come on that! 🌅

We've been busy over the last month making a number of improvements to the way iPhone Backup Extractor is put together. We're sharing a little of that now in our August release.

• Fix We've updated the app to support some further iOS 12 changes that have popped up in the betas.
• Improvement Lots of refactoring behind the scenes to make the app easier for us to build on. Watch this space!
• Improvement We've cleaned up a little of the app's console output.

We're back, for our first update of iPhone Backup Extractor this July. There's been plenty going on, and whilst iOS 12 support isn't new in this build, we wrote about the work we did over the last couple of weeks for Apple's iCloud changes. Yes, we fully support it all. We met Prince Charles the week before, recognising our work driving innovation in the UK, and talked about GDPR with him. How often can you write that in a change-log? I mean, really. 🤷‍♀️

• Improvement Assorted enhancements to backup loading to make them more memory efficient. Got a gigabyte manifest? Give it a spin.
• Improvement We build the app in a slightly different way to enable us to use even more memory. God forbid we'd need it. We'll try not to. Promise.
• Fix Got a System.ValueTuple.dll error? Sorry, we found some people running Windows 7 with .NET 4.6.1 didn't have this, so they got errors with the iCloud. All fixed now.

Today's release brings our second big new feature of June: detailed Apple and mobile device data for any iOS backup or device, built in to iPhone Backup Extractor. The data we show goes way beyond the information encoded on the device and in a backup. We've had to build out an entire API with gigabytes of supporting data to be able to do this in a secure and reliable way, and we're making that freely available from today. We've written in more detail on our blog about this release, the data you're now able to access, and the API. In other news, we're off to Buckingham Palace again later today. It's a busy day.

• Feature New "Info" tab showing detailed information about your Apple / iOS device. You'll see all sorts of details: more about the backup (file count, encryption type), which iCloud account it's associated with, when, where and by whom it was made, and a tonne of data about it's SIM and mobile registration properties.
• Improvement We go about preparing the app for release using a new system we've been working on. We can't talk about it, because it's a secret -- 🤫 -- but it's definitely there.