iPhone Backup Extractor 7
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We're off to a pretty busy start this year with updates, and it's exciting to be shipping the second release of the week. Today we're rounding up a collection of optimisations and bugfixes.

• Improvement iPhone Backup Extractor will be much faster when it comes to counting your data in the overview. More to come here.
• Fix We've resolved a rather strange issue whereby some messages from the sender would end up grouped in an "unknown" conversation. Sorry about that.
• Fix We've resolved another issue affecting iOS 4 users. That's 2 fixes for iOS 4 in as many weeks. In 2020! Who'd have thought it?
• Fix We've fixed a bug where the message previewer was sometimes getting the counts wrong when they were all selected.

Today's release is a Mac-only update that resolves an issue where recent macOS versions of iPhone Backup Extractor weren't able to update themselves without the Mac being rebooted. Who wants to reboot their Mac? We don't.

• Fix iPhone Backup Extractor can now update itself properly again (as it used to be able to do!)

This week's a double release week, with our second update to iPhone Backup Extractor arriving today. We hope you like this one, and we'd love to hear feedback on the new ECG/EKG functionality.

• Feature iPhone Backup Extractor now includes a function to enable the Apple Watch's ECG capability for supported devices that are territory locked. We're launching this feature as a beta as it works for some quite specific use cases. We'd love to read your feedback on it.
• Improvement iPhone Backup Extractor will now show full mobile data for backups or devices or devices with multiple SIM slots. In China, that's phones with two SIMs, and in the US and Europe, that's devices with a SIM and eSIM.
• Improvement Occasionally iPhone Backup Extractor would show the preview of the backup device with the wrong colours. Not any more.
• Improvement We've made a number of improvements to rictl whereby it won't wait to talk to additional iOS devices if it can successfully issue commands to the selected device.
• Improvement We've added a tooltip on the Windows version to show image metadata when previewing photos, matching what we already did on macOS.
• Fix We've patched a crash bug affecting some iOS 4 users. Yes, iOS 4 is still a thing. You should see our pile of iPhones.
• Fix Forensics mode no longer restates the sender's handle above every sent message in previews; PDF exports as are before.
• Fix Image rotation should now be correct for all SMS and image previews on Windows.

We've got a bunch of improvements and tweaks ready to find their way into iPhone Backup Extractor, and we're off to an early start this week with today's build. Hi!

• Improvement Switching between backups is now faster than it was before, as we've made the loading process less intensive, and users should find switching backups is now more responsive. This has come about from a series of changes to different parts of the process.
• Improvement Loading of data is now a little faster, too.
• Fix In very rare cases, the Windows app would show previews from the previously-selected backup.
• Fix On the Mac, pressing multiple keys when the left-hand navigation had focus could sometimes make it select multiple things simultaneously, which didn't make any sense. Won't happen now.

We're pleased to be shipping our first release of 2020, with a number of improvements to help users make the most from their licenses. We've got a host of new functionality that we're looking forward to shipping over the coming months. Happy new year!

• Improvement We've changed how we display the differences between the free and paid editions of iPhone Backup Extractor within the app. The language and interface we use now is hopefully clearer and simpler — and looks a good deal more modern.
• Improvement We've improved the dialogs that a user gets when running into any sort of overcapacity issue with their activations or devices.
• Improvement We've removed a few assets from the app that weren't used, reducing its size when installed.

This release is a minor update for Windows users that resolves a crash affecting the free edition.

• Fix Resolved crash problem on Windows. Sorry for the inconvenience!

After another busy week at Reincubate HQ we're shipping some neat updates to iPhone Backup Extractor. Today's release includes:

• Feature It's now possible to open files directly from "Expert mode": just right-click and choose "Open file". This makes life a lot easier when exploring large backups for data.
• Feature "Expert mode" now makes it possible for users to remove folders and their contents.
• Feature We've added support for pulling live device info using the rictl command.
• Improvement Work with directly connected devices is now cancellable. Happy days.
• Fix We've resolved an issue where image captions weren't shown when previewing messages.
• Fix Users recovering a legacy restrictions PIN could occasionally run into a crash. We've resolved that.
• Fix The right-click menu wasn't always working on the left-hand menu on Windows. Now it is.

This release is a minor patch, addressing an issue that broke some functionality with rictl in the last release.

• Fix Restored rictl device functionality.

We're gearing up for a few neat releases before Christmas, and here's the first of our December updates.

• Improvement The "Recover Screen Time password" menu item is now enabled when users have a backup selected, and will prompt them to connect a device. We've tweaked some of the copy in the app around Screen Time, too, to make it clearer.
• Improvement We've done a lot of reworking of our left-hand menu. Previously, if you repeatedly selected a number of different backups before each had finished loading, it could sometimes do strange things. This behaviour has been thoroughly ironed out. We've a few additional enhancements we'll be making in this area in the coming releases.
• Fix iPhone 11s are now correctly identified in the left-hand menu. They always should have been, as they're fully supported, but they were being referred to as iPhone12,3. Sorry!
• Fix Unnamed conversations were previously extracted to unnamed files: .pdf, for example. Oops. We've fixed that now.
• Fix Contact names in the WeChat message preview were being displayed as a hash instead of the contact's name. Now they're shown properly. 👍
• Fix We fixed a very unusual crash where the Windows version of iPhone Backup Extractor could occasionally come unstuck when previewing photos.

It's been a little while since our last iPhone Backup Extractor update as we've been juggling a few important new features and updates. Today we're releasing a few of those in 7.7.6.2400, and we'd love your feedback.

• Feature Device management commands are now available in iPhone Backup Extractor's command-line tool, rictl. Users can now script and perform device discovery, backup, shutdown and restart using rictl. This functionality is available over USB and Wi-Fi for Windows users, and USB only for macOS users. We're expecting to ship Wi-Fi support for macOS shortly, and we'll be adding more functionality to rictl in subsequent releases.
• Feature The built-in rictl tool's backup info command now provides a password hash for encrypted backups in the classic $itunes_backup$* format that hashcat uses.
• Fix Group chat participants weren't always shown correctly in the Messages data, and we've now fixed this.
• Fix We've resolved an issue affecting previews of large images from the sample backup.
• Fix We've made extraction of rich contact data more reliable; it was leading to a crash in some rare cases.

We're thrilled to be releasing iPhone Backup Extractor 7.7.5 with support for removal of the Screen Time passcode on iOS 13.1.1 and above, and with support for removal of Screen Time on macOS through the phone. This once again completes our support for Screen Time passcode reset and recovery across every version of iOS.

We've also taken a deep-dive into message extraction reliability, closing off a number of unusual problems that had cropped up.

• Feature Removal of unknown Screen Time passcodes on iOS 13. 🎉
• Improvement We've made a few minor tweaks to the layout of the Preferences window.
• Improvement Images on the welcome screen are now even crisper on macOS.
• Fix We no longer count folders as well as files when extracting content in "Expert mode". This led to numbers varying across the app, depending on how we were doing the count.
• Fix In some cases, phone numbers and email addresses which shared address book labels were missed in the preview and in CSV exports. This is now resolved.
• Fix We've fixed a bug that caused handles in WhatsApp group chats not to display (or to display incorrectly) in certain situations.
• Fix When extracting multiple conversations to PDF, each conversation file wasn't always starting at page 1. This is now resolved.
• Fix We've fixed a rare edge-case whereby the presence of HEIC files was causing extraction of photos to fail.
• Fix We've resolved an issue where iMessages weren't always shown in chronological order.

This release is a macOS-only fix release, resolving a problem affecting some users.

• Fix Some users were experiencing a crash when they ran iPhone Backup Extractor for the first time. We're sorry for the inconvenience.

We're shipping a small update to iPhone Backup Extractor today, to make the Screen Time passcode recovery process clearer for iOS 13 users.

• Improvement The Screen Time Passcode recovery wizard spells out what needs to be done on iOS 13, and links to our resources on this.
• Fix A handful of smaller internal changes.

Today's update is macOS-only, fixing a crash issue we introduced in yesterday's release. Sorry.

• Fix Fixes crash in yesterday's build, triggered by Screen Time recovery, app view or expert mode extraction.

Hot on the heels of last week's usability updates to iPhone Backup Extractor, we're releasing an update that substantially sharpens up the images in the macOS version. Oh, and it resolves a few niggling issues, too. We hope you enjoy it.

• Improvement Many of the graphics in the macOS version have been made much sharper. Woohoo!
• Improvement Graphics used in the previewers for unreadable files have been overhauled and look much nicer.
• Improvement The Mac version of iPhone Backup Extractor now has lovely crisp icons in "Expert mode", just like it does on Windows.
• Improvement We've updated a number of internal components behind the scenes. Nothing to see here, please move along.
• Fix We've sorted out a crash that could happen on macOS Catalina when run as a non-admin user.
• Fix We've solved an issue where group messages could be missing from previews. This was triggered by the presence of genuinely empty group conversations elsewhere in the backup. Which is a pretty odd thing, to be fair. 🤷‍♂️
• Fix iPhone Backup Extractor could crash in an odd way if it was unable to report some analytical data. Sorry about that. No reason why you can't run it entirely offline. You do you!

We've got a lovely release to announce today. 7.7.2.2167 includes a number of common-sense fixes to make iPhone Backup Extractor more intuitive, and clearer than ever. 👩‍🏫

• Improvement The activation window makes is a lot clearer how to create a free account if you don't already have one.
• Improvement The dialog for backup passwords is now clearer, and links to a great resource we have for learning more about backup passwords.
• Improvement We've made some tweaks to the "Getting started" view, making it clearer how to get up and running quickly
• Improvement We've tweaked the wording in the permissions dialog that new users see, making it clearer how to grant access to the default iPhone backup location.
• Improvement The app now provides much clearer guidance to Windows users working with HEIF files without the correct codecs installed.
• Improvement Relative paths are now supported in our rictl command-line tool.
• Fix As it should, preview mode will let you choose which 4 items you'd like to extract if you're on the free version of iPhone Backup Extractor. We'd accidentally broken this in a prior release, meaning users were getting an arbitrary selection of 4 items each time. Sorry!
• Fix File selection dialogs now correctly say "Save" rather than "Open". 😅
• Fix We've solved a curious issue whereby loading very unusual contact images could cause the app to crash.

Hot on the heels of our 7.7 release and the command-line functionality we introduced in that, we're adding another new feature: automated extraction of browser history, and a neat previewer to visualise browser history from with iPhone Backup Extractor. Please let us know how you get on with it. 🙂

• Feature Browser history data is now available from the overview and preview screens, and can be exported easily.
• Improvement We renamed the "Manage password" button for devices connected over USB.
• Fix We've resolved two edge-cases whereby WhatsApp or Viber data extraction could fail. They were unrelated. Although they're related now in the sense that they're both solved. Happy days.
• Fix Somehow our dialog for password management was showing passwords as they were entered. We've just fixed this.

We've been gearing up for our 7.7 release, and here it is: today we're shipping a big new feature in iPhone Backup Extractor: command-line support. iPhone Backup Extractor is now bundled with a free command-line tool named rictl for working with iOS backups and devices. ✍️

• Feature rictl released and shipped with iPhone Backup Extractor for command-line access to iOS backups and devices. Check out its documentation to learn more. You can get started with the new Scripting menu in Preferences.
• Feature iPhone Backup Extractor will now let you change or remove your iPhone backup password. You can do this with Utilities → Change backup password.
• Improvement Voicemail CSV exports now use ROWID instead of remote_uid after user requests. We hope this helps!

We're thrilled to be releasing iPhone Backup Extractor 7.6.9.2102 today. It's got a bunch of updates.

• Fix Voicemail extraction to CSV has received some attention, making the FileName field more useful when connecting CSV records to voicemail audio files.
• Fix Squashed a bug whereby if you removed and readded a backup, it might not show in the navigation.
• Fix Fixed a crash when the default backup directory is linked to an invalid folder.
• Fix Fixed Windows issue where symlink to alternate backup directory contains a space.
• Fix Fixed "retry" getting clipped on the overview screen.
• Fix Handfuls of updates and fixes ready for our next feature release.

Today's build doesn't include much that we're talking about, although it's got a big new feature for our beta testers. We'll tell you all about this in our upcoming iPhone Backup Extractor 7.7 release. Watch this space.

• Feature Something's changed in the "Preferences" tab. 🧐

We'd like to wish our American friends a very happy Independence Day today. Here in the UK we've no hard feelings, although it is a pity we have to pack our own teabags when we travel to see you. 🤷‍♂️ We're celebrating in our own way, with a new update to iPhone Backup Extractor: 7.6.17.2042. What's new?

• Improvement We've made some changes to how we handle password validation on backups made from iOS 10.2 and newer. Yes, that includes iOS 13.
• Feature We're including a major hidden feature that we're going to be inviting some of our beta testers to try out. If you'd like to be one of them please let us know! We're expecting everyone will be getting access to this in the coming weeks.

We're excited to be releasing a bit set of patches and improvements today: better support for corrupt backups, and a little bit more for iOS 13.

• Improvement On macOS, the image previewer now shows HEIC on High Sierra and above, and we've stopped Windows machines from endlessly showing a loading spinner or saying "missing file".
• Improvement The recordings previewer sorts voice notes by date.
• Improvement We added support for most iOS 13 data in our last release, and have included support for accessing iOS 13 devices over USB on macOS in this build. Windows support is already there in the prior releases.
• Fix Restored the ability to load incomplete encrypted backups which are missing an Info.plist.
• Fix Fixed an issue where USB backups might fail on Chinese systems.
• Fix Added a number of minor USB enhancements.
• Fix Resolved a curious bug where iPhone Backup Extractor's window would grow in width when opening Notes previews with image attachments.
• Fix We've solved a very infrequent issue affecting loading of photo albums.
• Fix We've resolved an issue loading Plists that are structurally invalid.
• Fix We've resolved a bug with the WeChat extractor, where it might consume a lot of disk space during extraction.
• Fix We've resolved a rare issue where SMS extraction might fail if a particular type of Digital Touch image was present.

Happy WWDC week! We've been in San Jose with Apple's team learning about iOS 13 and what's new in macOS Catalina. Here's an update to iPhone Backup Extractor to support some of the new things in iOS 13.

• Improvement We've added support for messages, notes and recordings on iOS 13, and for iPadOS. We've a little more to do for Screen Time passcodes, and we'll roll that into a release soon. 😀
• Improvement iPhone Backup Extractor is now notarized on macOS. This is a change that's been coming for a while, and will be required on macOS Catalina. As part of this, we're leaving macOS 10.9 behind, and supporting only 10.10 and above from now on. Older versions will still work with earlier releases.

We usually ship updates to our Windows and macOS apps in sync, but this week we're shipping 7.6.14.1866 is a special treat just for our Mac users.

• Improvement We've made some changes to how we prepare iPhone Backup Extractor for distribution. And now we've distributed those changes to you. Hurrah!
• Fix We show the macOS permissions dialog more frequently, rather than failing when permission is unavailable. Makes sense, right?
• Fix We've resolved a problem whereby a user on a fresh install of macOS with no backups would get a nonsense "Accessing backup failed" message when they ran iPhone Backup Extractor for the first time.

It's May Day! The return of spring, and time for us to release iPhone Backup Extractor 7.6.13.1841. Here's what's new:

• Feature What's that, rich support for iMessage attachments being rendered as they are by the iPhone? Yes, that's it! We've overhauled how we show iMessage attachments, to make them crisper (and more useful) than ever.
• Fix We've resolved a crash that could happen on Mojave when a backup had never been taken, and permissions hadn't been granted.
• Fix Fixed occasionally inaccurate recording dates.
• Fix We now store additional metadata in the iOS backups that iPhone Backup Extractor creates.

We're excited to be shipping iPhone Backup Extractor 7.6.12.1784 today. What's new? Read on, dear reader:

• Improvement Screen Time passcode recovery is now much faster in a number of different ways. Happy days!
• Improvement We've tweaked the icons shown in iPhone Backup Extractor's overview to be more appropriately sized on Windows.
• Fix We've found we degraded the info view that was shown for a backup. We've correctly restored some of that information, and there's more to come.
• Fix It's niche, but we care: we there was a bug for SMS and contacts extraction from iOS 1, 2 and 3 backups. Fixed now! Similarly, we've resolved a problem for WhatsApp extraction that was affecting iOS 5 and iOS 7 backups.
• Fix We've improved accuracy on recovered note dates.
• Fix We no longer create a temporary folder with a misspelling in its name. 🙄
• Fix Some users were getting error 0x64 when trying to a recover a Screen Time passcode after a device had been reset (with "Erase all content and settings. We've solved that.

Today's release of iPhone Backup Extractor resolves a handful of issues.

• Fix Invalid symlinks in the backup path are handled properly.
• Fix Screen Time passcode recovery works for devices which hadn't made a backup before. We'd introduced a problem here in the prior build. Sorry.
• Fix We've tweaked the wording on the "welcome" screen, and adjusted a few pixels.
• Fix We've zapped duplicate recovered notes; you shouldn't see them now, and we've also improved the accuracy of notes recovery.
• Fix We've resolved an issue in exports of KML location data. Google Earth Pro loves our exports now.
• Fix We handle changing the default iTunes backup location better now, when another process has locked the folder.

• Feature Who'd have thunk it? iPhone Backup Extractor can now create backups for you, and you don't need iTunes. If you also run iTunes, you'll see we create these in "archived" format. Of course, you can still do everything you normally would with them.
• Improvement Screen Time passcode recovery is now even faster. Lucky you!
• Fix We've improved the way we monitor for changes to backups. In particular, this prevents a crash that could happen in some cases.
• Fix We handle device disconnection better when it occurs during a backup.

We've got a collection of neat updates to iPhone Backup Extractor for you today.

• Feature We've added "restart" and "shutdown" commands for devices in the "Utilities" pane
• Improvement We've reworked a fair bit of how we handle USB connections to devices; if something goes wrong, the app will be much clearer about what's happened.
• Improvement Improved handling of Screen Time passcode recovery. Similar to the above, if something goes wrong, we'll explain more clearly.
• Improvement We've simplified how we show licensing options to users.
• Improvement We've totally replaced the permissions window that's shown to users on macOS Mojave.
• Improvement We've updated the sample backup included with iPhone Backup Extractor.
• Fix We broke scrolling in the left-hand navigation in the last build. Sorry. This update fixes that!

Today we're launching a neat feature: automatically changing your iTunes backup location. 🎉 If you'd like to store your backups under a different folder, or on a network drive or in Dropbox, it's now easily possible. We've rolled this into the free edition of iPhone Backup Extractor, so anyone can take advantage of it, and we've got a support page explaining more about how this works.

• Feature Easily change your iTunes backup folder if you run out of disk space or wish to store your backups on another drive.
• Fix We've solved an issue affecting some macOS users with no backups.
• Fix We've added a minor patch for WhatsApp and contacts extraction.

We'd like to welcome iPhone Backup Extractor 7.6.7.1676 today. What's new? Let's see:

• Improvement We've tidied up the left-hand navigation bar and added a nice clear "Add data" button to the top of the app's window. This lets you add iCloud accounts or iTunes backup search locations. Convenient, eh?
• Improvement We've sped up the transition in and out of "Forensics mode". If you want to see for yourself, this is an option you can enable in preferences.
• Improvement Where iCloud note attachments can't be recovered, we explain why.
• Improvement We've added support for location attachments in WhatsApp -- and linked them up to Apple Maps (on macOS) and Google Maps (on Windows). Hurrah!

Today's release is a Windows-only update, fixing a pair of USB issues that some users ran into. We're sorry about that!

• Improvement We've improved how we detect USB issues so that this doesn't happen again, and is better handled if anything odd happens.
• Fix Prevented the app from crashing when connecting a new USB device under some circumstances.
• Fix Solved a crash when timing out connecting to a USB device.

It's release time again for us here at Reincubate HQ. Today's release has a handful of neat improvements and fixes. It looks like we're going to drop a new feature next week, and we're all tingling with excitement here.

• Improvement Contact photos are now shown in the contacts previewer. Happy day!
• Improvement USB devices now display with a pane making it clearer a backup is required for data access, with Screen Time passcode recovery moved to the new "Utilities" pane.
• Improvement The Screen Time passcode recover wizard will automatically close when the device disconnects.
• Improvement When "Forensics mode" is enabled, each message will display both the sender and the verbose date it was sent.
• Fix We've resolved a nasty crash bug affecting untrusted iOS 7 devices.
• Fix We've resolved some weirdness that could be encountered by toggling "Forensics mode" on and off whilst previewing messages. Not all weirdness is a good thing.
• Fix We've fixed a bug with message attachments when being exported into HTML. Caused a problem with some location data for some users.
• Fix Fixed a crash if there's a space at the end of your iCloud username. I mean, really? Who doesn't have a space at the end of their iCloud account? 🤯

We've got a real humdinger of a release for you today with a host of improvements to call history, notes and message extraction.

• Feature iPhone Backup Extractor now exports notes into a lovely PDF format, replacing the HTML format we previously used. PDF works better for preserving the flow of your notes, and we're able to present attachments and embedded data in a more coherent way.
• Feature Externally-hosted notes are now exported. Store your iPhone's notes in Gmail? Not a problem.
• Feature Call history previewers and exports now include bandwidth used in Facetime calls.
• Improvement Forensics mode now applies a number of formatting changes to notes, and uses an unambiguous date format across the board.
• Improvement CSV exports of contacts now have better-formatted numbers and contact names, and we've added call types.
• Improvement PDF exports of messages have been enhanced to resemble iPhone messages more closely.
• Fix Our note previewer now shows the full note body along with modification dates.
• Fix Messages with image attachments sometimes included curious null bytes. We've whacked them. Whack!

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.

June's been exciting so far, with WWDC and Apple's updates on the future of iOS and the iCloud. Here's our latest release: this one's got a few nice tweaks in it.

• Feature All users of iPhone Backup Extractor will now see the new left-hand navigation pane that we released at the start of May.
• Feature We now automatically search for backups as made by Windows Store version of iTunes.
• Improvement Some cosmetic changes on macOS to lighten the main part of the interface.
• Fix Our Plist viewer was going a bit wonky on iCloud backups. It now shows a clearer message as to what is going on.

We've been busy here at Reincubate HQ over the last couple of weeks. We're recruiting, preparing to jet off to the US for meetings, and, well... shipping software. ✈️ On that note, here's our latest release of iPhone Backup Extractor. We think this one's pretty neat.

• Feature We display iCloud account names when they're added.
• Improvement We've continued our overhaul of the left-hand menu in the app, further simplifying it. We've improved the contrast to make it even easier to read.
• Improvement We show instructions on how to add most types of data source when they're not present. We hide a few special categories by default.
• Improvement We've added neater "add" buttons to the menu.
• Improvement We've put a handy link to the app's welcome screen at the top of the navigation. You're welcome. 🙇‍♂️
• Improvement The magic of our DeviceIdentifier API is being used to show crisper, brighter device icons.
• Improvement It's now clearer how Apple Watch backups are shown. Basically, when you load a backup we search it for Apple Watch data. If it's present, you'll see your Watch backups. ⌚️
• Improvement We use a "busy" indicator in a smarter way whilst we're loading iCloud data.
• Improvement Emoji are shown properly in some parts of the app under Windows. Who'd have thought that would be fiddly? 🤷‍♀️

If you've recently installed or updated iPhone Backup Extractor and don't see the new navigation, there's no need to worry. We're rolling these changes out slowly to minimise disruption, and not every user will get this new look and feel just yet. If you'd like to skip the queue and get on it straight away, please reach out to us directly.

We treated our Mac users earlier with the first release of our updated left-hand navigation. Today we're releasing the first iteration of this for Windows users, and sweeping up a few minor issues in the Mac release. There's more to come, and we'd love to read your feedback. ✍️ We'll be writing a little more in future as we continue to improve the navigation.

• Improvement Overhauled left-hand navigation system, with newer look and feel on Windows. We group sources of data in a different way, and allow you to see a little more information on them before selection.
• Improvement A number of visual tweaks here and there.

If you've recently installed or updated iPhone Backup Extractor and don't see the new navigation, there's no need to worry. We're rolling these changes out slowly to minimise disruption, and not every user will get this new look and feel just yet. If you'd like to skip the queue and get on it straight away, please reach out to us directly.

Here's our next update of iPhone Backup Extractor, with a few handy tweaks for some users.

• Improvement We've simplified the message we present to users with encrypted backups. Of course we support them!
• Improvement We analyse more metadata from devices, which helps us help you do more. 💪
• Fix We've made a few reliability improvements, particularly for notes data.

It's May, and it's time for a release. We've hinted at some of the changes in our plan, and the first preview of our new left-hand navigation systems is now out for macOS users. There are changes for Windows users, too, and more to come. Don't be shy: tell us what you think and how you get on with it! 🤞

• Improvement Overhauled left-hand navigation system, with newer look and feel on macOS. We group sources of data in a different way, and allow you to see a little more information on them before selection.
• Improvement We have updated the app's title bar on macOS so that it is in-line with how the title bar works on Windows.
• Improvement A number of visual tweaks here and there.

If you've recently installed or updated iPhone Backup Extractor and don't see the new navigation, there's no need to worry. We're rolling these changes out slowly to minimise disruption, and not every user will get this new look and feel just yet. If you'd like to skip the queue and get on it straight away, please reach out to us directly.

We said it was coming, and here it is. On the heels of our last build we're releasing a number of fixes which help with corrupted backups and WhatsApp attachments. Also, London was 28℃ in April. 🌞 Can you believe that?

• Improvement Reduced strictness of Manifest format checking, allowing for a broader array of malformed backups to be read.
• Fix Support for latest WhatsApp attachment format.
• Fix Updated iOS 11 text on the restrictions passcode window.
• Fix Enhanced "device limit reached" messaging.
• Fix Clear extraction menu of data counts when on the encrypted backup password needed screen.

We've been celebrating our second Queen's Award, and working on a bunch of behind-the-scenes changes to iPhone Backup Extractor. This release is built from our enhanced code-base, but is otherwise similar to 7.6.0.2089. Back to regular releases shortly, and we'll ship an update build in the coming days. 👑

• Improvement Refactored build process.

The sun is back out, and that means it's time another release of iPhone Backup Extractor made its way into the world from our eagle's nest by the Tower of London. ☀️

• Fix Message format update for some iOS 11.3 users.
• Fix Improved robustness handling corrupted manifests caused by third-party tools.
• Fix Various text fixes around the app, clarifying and correcting.

On the heels of last week's 7.6 release, we're shipping a smaller release with a handful of fixes today. 🙇‍♂️ Don't forget you can always reach out to us!

• Fix Some users have been running into a "too many open files" error. We've nixed that in many cases.
• Fix We've sped up display of "Expert mode" for our macOS users.
• Fix We've sped up dragging and dropping out many files from "Expert mode". 🏃‍♀️

We're thrilled to be releasing iPhone Backup Extractor 7.6 today. It introduces a milestone new feature: previews of iCloud data. Rather than needing to download data in order to view it within the app, you can now preview a variety of data before choosing whether to download it. Happy days! ☀️ Let us know how you get on with it.

• Feature Previews released for iCloud backups and for some forms of iCloud account data.
• Improvement Improvements to how backup / data source details are shown.
• Improvement Lots behind the scenes in our integration with the Reincubate Cloud Data API.
• Fix Numerous stability and resource consumption/contention fixes.

Hooray! It's time for our first release of March.

• Feature Resumption of downloads from the Photo Stream or iCloud Photo Library is now possible.
• Improvement Lots of work behind the scenes on an assortment of optimisations, both in terms of speed and memory use.
• Improvement You can now cancel Photo Stream or iCloud Photo Library downloads, or extractions from backups. With great power comes great responsibility.
• Fix Also, we fixed resumption of iCloud backup downloads.

Some of our favourite releases are Monday releases. Here's the latest!

• Improvement More speed-ups in our image and photo previewer.
• Improvement We took the "rate us" link off the main window to further streamline the app. Rather than diverting your feedback into that system, it's better to talk. 🙏
• Fix We had broken "View as Plist" in an earlier build, and now we're fixed it. Sorry.
• Fix Downloading "Everything else" from the iCloud now means a saner list of files.
• Fix We've resolved a crash some users saw if they navigated away from a backup whilst the app was checking a password.

We've started this week strong, with this being our second release of the week. It's only Tuesday! Whatever next?

• Improvement We use some neat hardware acceleration on our photo previews. Mm, zippy! 🏃‍♀️
• Fix If you drag out you two files that have the same name simultaneously, you'll no longer find yourself in a sticky situation.

Here's a new release of iPhone Backup Extractor to start your week. We've got some nice bits in this one.

• Improvement Message previews are a lot faster, particularly on macOS. And there are loading spinners for attachments. And clearer icons for attachment states. Hurrah! 🎉
• Improvement Various performance enhancements where the app reads data, particularly on macOS, and also with various controls we use.
• Fix Scrollbars on Windows are no longer a bit short when there's a lot of data. And the horizontal scrollbars are behaving themselves.
• Fix Some words were getting cut off the edge of the scre---. Oops.
• Fix The time shown in the "Contact us" dialog works properly with DST now. We love summer.
• Fix We don't pull you back to an encrypted backup if you switched away whilst the app was checking the password.
• Fix App view store page links were broken. Now they're not.

It's valentine's day. Love is in the air. So is our latest update to Reincubate iPhone Backup Extractor. We hope you like it! 💌

• Improvement Dragging out files is neater than ever, as they'll no longer appear in your folder of choice encapsulated in another folder.
• Improvement We use lovely images of the iPhones X and 8 in the app now, and correctly identify the 8.
• Improvement We've made PDF generation use less memory.
• Fix We broke PhotoStream and some forms of real-time data access for some users. And now we've fixed it. We're sorry.
• Fix We also fixed the filenames of extract contacts in VCF form. They weren't very useful before, but now they are.
• Fix iOS 11 notes now get extracted properly.

We're thrilled to release this update of iPhone Backup Extractor, headlining with support for previews of recordings in iPhone backups. To mark this, we've codenamed the release 1998: the year Britney Spears shot to fame. We've mixed feelings about that. 👩‍🎤

• Feature Previews of recordings. Happy days! We've more to come in this area.
• Improvement We've made some improvements to the display of voicemail previews.
• Fix We introduced a nasty bug late last year which led to some Application data being shown under Application Groups, and vice versa. Fixed now.
• Fix In some cases, our ricloud API's notifications on iCloud backup downloads were leading backup downloads to fail. We handle these properly now, as we should. Sorry.
• Fix Resumption of iCloud backup downloads is now even more robust.
• Fix We handle the "multiple types could match" issue a little better, though we're still collecting data on this one.

We've been beavering away in London's sunny sub-zero temperates, and this latest release is the fruit of our labours. How is it for you? ❄️

• Fix We correctly split Application and Application Groups when dragging out files.
• Fix Edge-case for notes extraction has been fixed. Enjoy your notes!
• Fix iOS 11 locations corrected for messages. Welcome to the new.
• Improvement Lots of things behind the scenes.

In Old English, February was called Solmonath, or mud month. We've tried not to get any on this new build, which has a number of internal enhancements. 👩‍💻

• Improvement We've improved the user prompt when no files are available on iCloud downloads.
• Improvement Turned off some of our logging for invalid Plists, and changed how we report some errors.
• Improvement Internal change to how we handle filenames from the iCloud.

In order to close out January we're shipping another release. 7.5.11 brings with it new previewers and enhancements for the iOS 11.3 developer preview. Hurrah! 🎉

• Feature Integrated previewer for Notes. You can see what's in your backup without needing to extract.
• Feature Integrated previewer for voicemail. As with Notes, you check check out your voicemail without leaving the app.
• Feature Support for changes in iOS 11.3 backups.

Our latest release includes a lot of work behind the scenes to make things smoother than ever. 💪

• Improvement Drag and drop import and export is smarter than ever.
• Improvement We've made a number of enhancements to our internal error reporting and management.
• Improvement We've integrated one of our newer APIs behind the scenes, and will be including data from it in the interface soon.

We're celebrating Tuesday and London's first glimpse of the sun in 2018 with a new release today. ☀️

• Feature Oh my goodness! We've just shipped drag and drop support for expert mode. You can drag in! You can drag out!
• Improvement Image previews are clearer as to what is happening when the image cannot be displayed.
• Fix Progress is shown more accurately for iCloud access.

Three deploys in a week. Yes, that's how our 2018 is starting. How is yours? Our new release has got a bunch of good ingredients.

• Improvement Our net code received an overhaul, making our interaction with our APIs that much smarter and more robust. It has a number of internal changes to pave the way for doing something pretty cool in the coming period. We're hard at work on that.
• Fix Extraction of locations is now even more robust than it was, as is linking of contacts, call logs and texts.
• Fix We handle corrupt PList files in a much smarter way now.
• Fix We broke our lovely PList file viewer in a build late last year. We've fixed it. Sorry!
• Fix Undeletion is even smarter. Happy days!

After yesterday's excitement around the release we've only gone and released another build. This one includes a number of changes.

• Feature Updated .NET boot strap from 4.0 to 4.6. This allows us to do some new things in the app.
• Feature We've shipped a prototype component. Can you guess what it is? Watch this space.
• Improvement You'll see the app now boasts of being made by Reincubate in its title. We're proud of that.
• Improvement We log slightly more data when something goes wrong. All the better to help us improve!

We're releasing a small build which updates some of the security certificates we use.

• Fix Nothing scary happened, we're just rotating certificates and keeping things fresh.

Today's 1905 release is a big one: we've added preview functionality for contacts and call history. Our pleasure. 💪

• Feature New previewers for contacts and call history.
• Improvement We no longer filter out lovely HEIC images: they'll be provided through the automated photo export. Happy days!
• Improvement We no longer extract video thumbnails as photos. They are, but they're not what you want outside of expert mode, and that's still there for users who do.
• Fix We patched a regression bug for iOS 10.0 encrypted backups. In English, that means we broke it and then we fixed it. Sorry. 🙅‍♀️
• Fix Recovery of notes and note attachments is more robust than ever. Try and extract some weird stuff, we dare you!
• Fix We made some minor improvements to how we handle iOS 1 and 2. Remember them? We still have devices that run 'em.

Two releases in as many days? That's right, here's the latest release iPhone Backup Extractor. We're hard at work on the next already.

• Fix Fixed irregular issues extracting photos from the AppView.
• Fix Fixed a nasty voicemail extraction fix caused where some files are missing.
• Fix Prevented default extraction of MetaData folder contents with photos. Of course, you can still extract it in expert mode.

To celebrate it being Tuesday, we’ve just shipped a new build.

• Improvement We've added support for extraction of locations where the SMS database is missing from the backup.
• Fix iOS 11 backup modification is better than ever.
• Fix Better translation of timezones for iCloud backups; you should see it in local time.

Here's a build to round out November -- and to use less of your disk space!

• Improvement Improvements to how the application stores temporary data whilst extracting. You'll see it's faster and uses less disk space now. Happy day!
• Fix We've overhauled some internal components to provide greater support for reading curious data types.
• Fix We've added a legacy fix for a newer type of iOS 10 backup corruption.

Another day, another release. 7.5.5.1858 has a bunch of handy things:

• Fix Modifying backups is now even more robust.
• Fix PDF extraction of data is more robust than ever -- and faster, too!
• Fix We'd accidentally broken support for macOS 10.10 in an earlier build. Sorry! We have fixed it.

Today's fix is a simple performance update. Enjoy!

• Fix Further improved performance of overview.

We've a spooky new update for you today, with a small handful of changes.

• Improvement We capture more diagnostic information when something goes awry.
• Fix Improved support for backup modification.
• Fix We've sped up creation of PDFs, and reduced the amount of memory that the process takes.

Another day, another build! Today we've shipped a bunch of small tweaks to further enhance iPhone Backup Extractor. We've something exciting around the corner that we're paving the way for.

• Improvement We now provide UID in exports of calendar data.
• Fix We capture slightly more diagnostic data around corrupt backups.
• Fix We've upgraded the .NET library bootstrap from 4.0 to 4.6.0. This probably won't mean much for you, unless you're one of our Windows Vista users.
• Fix We've tidied up a few more areas of memory use.

We’ve just released another lovely build. This has a handful of smaller updates.

• Improvement We now use less memory than ever when exporting data to PDF
• Fix Even more robust support for curiously formed notes
• Fix The application is now more robust when something goes wrong on macOS

Today's release is a macOS-only maintenance release, helping us to improve the robustness of the application.

• Improvement We now gather crash reports for native crashes.

Another Tuesday, another release. Today’s release brings a number of neat enhancements and fixes.

• Improvement We've shipped many enhancements to memory and disk use over the last month or so, and we've done yet more. Today's build should get your data even faster from encrypted backups.
• Improvement Now we show InstallDomain in a neat way in expert mode.
• Improvement We've added richer device names for the backup details section.
• Fix In our eagerness to enhance notes in our 7.5.5.1771 release, we introduced a curious Unicode issue. Now it's fixed.
• Fix We've fixed a handful of issues when working with unusual iOS 8 backups, and with a few flavours of iOS 4. Remember that? We do!

This Tuesday brings our next release, which is all about improving user experiences. We’ve made improvements to iCloud interaction, to iPhone 8 and X support, and to memory handling. This afternoon the team are off to Mansion House to meet the Lord Mayor of London on behalf of Her Majesty The Queen, as part of Reincubate winning a Queen’s Award for Enterprise.

• Improvement Several important enhancements made for iCloud access to improve robustness of downloads.
• Improvement We’ve reduced the amount of memory that iPhone Backup Extractor requires when exporting data to CSV format.
• Fix We’ve added a small fix for some minor differences in data formats that we’ve observed from the iPhone 8. Dig that glass back!

Today’s release brings a host of goodies and improvements to iPhone Backup Extractor on both Windows and macOS. What’s new?

• Improvement Copy-to-clipboard support for a whole bunch of extra fields.
• Improvement Timezones! We've made a number of enhancements to normalise times in data from apps which store it with or without daylight saving or timezone modifiers.
• Improvement Did you ever wonder why the app didn't have a "Windows" menu on macOS? Wonder no more: accessibility improved.
• Fix We resolved an issue triggered by some formats of visual voicemail.
• Fix Our export PDFs had some issues with international characters, which we've now resolved. We've made the process faster, too.

We’re back to our usual combined Windows and macOS updates, and today’s is a good ‘un. Sometimes we need to say goodbye to the past, and this release officially drops support for macOS 10.7. It’s to old for us to readily support with our pace of changes. 1771 — as we like to call this new release — includes the following:

• Feature You can now right-click backups shown in the left-hand menu to easily reveal their folder in Windows Explorer or macOS Finder. Neat!
• Improvement The macOS overview pane uses our newer look, making the overview of available data easier to digest.
• Improvement Scrolling through photo previews is much faster on macOS, and resizing the application’s window doesn’t interfere with them.
• Improvement Support for Viber 7.5’s new message format.
• Fix If you’re a fan of the alphabet you’ll love the more rigorous alphabetical sorting of content in expert mode.
• Fix Non-Latin characters were sometimes coming out garbled in extracted notes. This is now fixed.
• Fix Backup editing was breaking in a number of situations. Now it isn’t. Hurrah!
• Fix No long shall extracting calendar entries from encrypted backups take up so much disk space.

This afternoon brings a minor update. Usually we ship updates for Windows and macOS together, but today's build is just for Windows.

• Improvement Better detection of problems on Windows.

Nary a week’s passed and we have another update for Windows and macOS. This release smooths some things out behind the scenes and tidies up a number of interface and experience elements.

• Improvement iCloud ribbon looks a lot better on Windows.
• Improvement "Preferences" and "About" dialog on macOS look a little smarter
• Improvement Extraneous terms and copyright removed from the main window.
• Fix Curious artefacts removed from expert mode whilst loading.
• Fix Ever found resizing the app a little fiddly on Windows? Now it isn’t. Resize away!
• Fix We reworked a fundamental part of the app that makes things much more robust when adding and removing accounts, activation and backup locations.

We’ve just released another update for both Windows and macOS. No new features in this build: we’ve focused on performance improvements and bugfixes. Enjoy it!

• Improvement Things are faster than ever! Zoom or ZOMG?
• Improvement Library and Mobile Device domains are shown with friendlier names
• Fix We do more to use less… memory. No need for that extra RAM.
• Fix Stopped SMS attachments from creating “ghost” deleted messages.
• Fix Clicking retry on macOS no longer has the possibility to make the app freeze. Sorry, that drove us crazy.
• Fix Stopped the previewer from being deselected on macOS whilst things were still loading.

Hot on the heels of last week's release, here's another update, this time concentrating on photos and WhatsApp.

• Feature Working with encrypted backups is now a lot faster. Quick, create more data!
• Fix Prevented photo extraction from eating too much disk space.
• Fix Straightened out a potential crash when extracting photos and videos.
• Fix "The specified path is too long?" Oh no! But not any more, we fixed this one.
• Fix The "iCloud is sleeping" message doesn't incorrectly pop up from some "contact us" links.
• Fix Fixed many unusual crash situations. Situate yourself how you'd like!
• Fix Images handled much better in extraction of regular and undeleted content.
• Fix Encrypted backup size is now shown smartly for macOS backups.

This last week team RI were off for a picnic in the park, and we shipped 7.5.0.1661 with a whole list of speed and reliability enhancements. You'll see the next few builds going to make the application more robust than ever.

• Improvement All left hand navigation items are expanded by default.
• Improvement We've updated the lovely README file that gets installed with the Windows version of the app.
• Fix The encrypted backup password box did some funny flickering whilst encrypted backups were being loaded.
• Fix Scrolling through images in the preview was funky on some Macs. We fixed it.
• Fix It was possible for one state from the iCloud API to upset the app. No longer!
• Fix Recovery of undeleted messages could take a lot of memory, and sometimes more than a user had. Memory usage on undeleted is nice and smooth now.
• Fix There was a styling error that sometimes hid contact names in group messages when exported to HTML. There isn't any more!
• Fix A nasty calendar extraction problem for pre-iOS 8 builds had crept in. We excised it.
• Fix Our KML exports were technically valid but Google Earth wasn't happy with them. 7.5.0.1661 resolves this.

• Improvement Faster backup loading speed.
• Improvement Split AppGroups and AppPlugins from Application domains.
• Fix Fixed Error 17. Yeah, we didn't like it either.
• Fix Our “about” dialog has a +10% prettiness bonus.

• Fix We've spotted and fixed an issue with some deleted messages going missing from previews in the Windows release. Sorry!

• Improvement Improve iTunes data access for offline backups and provide access to more data.
• Improvement We've enhanced our iTunes functionality with a number of speed fixes.

We've got a big new feature for you today: recovery of contacts from iCloud, independent of any backups you might have. Also, the first iOS 11 beta has only been out a few days, but we've added support for it. Happy days!

• Feature Extraction of Contacts from the iCloud.
• Improvement Support for iOS 11 Calendar, Messages and Notes.

Today's release includes a number of enhancements to our iCloud functionality.

• Fix We've resolved a nasty crash when receiving data from our iCloud API.
• Fix We've sorted a nasty keybag decryption error affecting iOS 10.2.
• Fix We've made the 2FA challenge window faster.

We've got a cracking new feature for you today: extraction of messages into PDF.

• Feature Messages can now be extracted into a beautiful PDF format. This works for deleted messages, too.
• Improvement We've reorganised the "Extract" menu to group related items into subfolders. We've also removed most of the separators from the file menu on Windows.
• Fix We've made resizing the main application window faster on Windows.
• Fix We've fixed a problem where the offline activation system couldn't be clicked on Windows.

• Feature Extract as PDF. The extract format family is finally complete. Now you can extract data from any chat app (including iOS native apps) in glorious PDF. Pretty Doggone Fine.
• Improvement Extract menu options now include the same icons as the File menu options. It is all about a consistent look and feel for the product.
• Fix Fixed a bug in the offline activation window which made the activation button invisible when the key was pasted in. Now, the activation button is easier to see than a dog on stilts.

• Fix This is a minor update to our earlier release of 7.4.7.1582.

• Feature Added Apple WatchOS 3 support. The first time anyone has had WatchOS support.
• Feature We added a sample data iCloud account for John Appleseed. We added this for users of Free and Basic plans so they could get a taste of the full iPhone Backup Extractor experience. You can follow the story of John and Jane from young lovers to married couple. See their photos, watch their videos, read about Tommy the wonder dog; what happened at the vet? However, if you don't want to see this data then you will be able to switch it off via the help menu or the iCloud accounts window.
• Fix For years now a mystery deleted note has haunted the Notes recovery process. Today we exorcised it. In the past you would see the note from 01/01/2001 whenever your recovered notes from any backup. It has finally been laid to rest, and you will only recover your own, familiar notes from now on.

• Improvement We changed the Mac installer to a gorgeous one that even looks good on retina. We don't want to oversell it, but it's prettier than the Mona Lisa.
• Fix Fixed an issue with the reloading of iCloud backups. If you downloaded one data category then that would be the only data you would see; even after downloading more. Now you will see all of your downloaded data.
• Fix iPhone Backup Extractor is now notifying users to upgrade to 7.4.6.1563, because we care and 7.4.6.1563 is the cat's pajamas.

• Feature Added support for WatchOS 2. Whoop, whoop!
• Improvement Added a recommendation about encrypting your backup. This is just a friendly message to encourage users to think about their data security. Our iOS experts love to talk about data security.
• Improvement Viber changed their database locations which meant that iCloud messages were not being recovered for the latest Viber version. You can now recover Viber messages after we coxed the database out with cookies and chocolate.
• Improvement Made improvements to the update mechanism which will push all users to the latest iPhone Backup Extractor. Because we ❤️ all our users, and we want you to enjoy the best of what the software can offer. 🎈

• Feature We are happy to ship the first iCloud recovery software that can help you recover Tinder messages. You will find it in the Preview window along with Photos, Messages, WhatsApp, Viber and others. If you accidentally delete a message, or worse yet, the entire app. You can simply click on the Tinder icon to review any messages in your backup. We will continue to look for ways to improve Tinder recovery but this is our Valentine's gift for all of the lovers out there. For more details please read this week’s Tinder themed blog.
• Feature We have added iCloud Photo Library which makes iPhone Backup Extractor the most complete iCloud recovery software on the market. Now you will be able to download all of your photos and videos from all Photo Library albums (including shared albums). When you login to your iCloud account you will see the all new Photo Library option beneath Photostream (left side pane). To make things easier the entire process is the same as Photostream. Simply click the Download button to recover your entire Photo Library.
• Improvement For Windows users we have also updated the folder browsers to make them more modern. Although this is only a cosmetic change; it is more inline with the look and feel of the software.
• Fix Especially good news for Windows 8 users with a bug fix that was crashing or hanging the app. Not any more we squashed the bug and you can now return to seamless data extraction.
• Fix We also fixed the Windows bug which was stopping you from closing the software via the File menu. Older versions would freeze when you used this method to close the app. We’re all tired of freezing this winter, so the fix is in and let spring begin.

As of today, we're making a big change: today's release of iPhone Backup Extractor 7.4.4.1505 makes access to encrypted backups available to all of our users with iPhone Backup Extractor. We're making this change retroactively for all users on the Basic and Home editions, so they'll get the feature without any additional cost, despite having bought their licenses back in 2008! We've also bumped up the number of devices (from 2 to 5) that can be accessed for users on our Pro and Premium editions.

We're committed to helping people make use of their iOS devices in a secure way, and we're keen to encourage use of encrypted backups and two-factor authentication (2FA). 2FA is already free for all of our iCloud users. With this change, all users of iPhone Backup Extractor are able to benefit from the protection afforded to them by encrypted backups.

• Feature Encrypted iTunes backups are now supported in the Basic plan. All of the encrypted backup limitations have been removed. Previously the Basic plan would only let you recover 4 files from an encrypted backup, now you can recover all of your data from an unlimited number of iTunes backups. You asked, we listened. Read all about it in our iPhone Backup Extractor blog post on better experience and new features.
• Feature The Premium plan enjoys an increase for the iCloud devices to recover iOS data from. 5 iCloud devices supported uplifted from the original 2 iCloud devices, which makes it a better all-round option.
• Improvement We changed the iTunes encrypted backup icon and added a very foreboding padlock; it beefs up the classic iTunes icon and lets everyone know what’s what. This just to further help you distinguish each backup at a glance without the need for selecting the backup itself.
• Improvement We improved the icons in the AppView and removed the meaningless bright blue icon and replaced it with a classy Apple on a gray background. It is really an aesthetic change to make the entire program more consistent in look and feel.
• Improvement Mac users will notice The file menu extract by folder option will now opens to the default iTunes backup folder; you don’t need to take the scenic route to your backup folder anymore.
• Improvement Windows users, We have continued the hard work on Photo previews in Windows. The Photos should be even quicker again this week, the quest will go on until the Photos are previewed faster than a dog can eat a hamburger.
• Fix A bug in the file menu was fixed. Previously performing multiple file menu extractions would extract the same data every time regardless of the file selected. It was like something out of a Black Mirror episode. Now using the File menu extraction will extract all the correct data every time, more like an episode of Happy Days. While we were in there we also threw in an extra message box asking you where you want to put the data. This will help you keep all of your recovered data in the one location.
• Fix iCloud backups with very large files would sometime throw an error called JSON Parse error. Well, not anymore. JSON Parse has officially left the building.
• Fix Added full task acknowledgment to the servers which means that if any servers drop out the task will not be lost. This will help keep the iCloud downloads fast, efficient and complete.

• Improvement We have improved the "File" menu's conversion options. In the past we would ask you to search for the file in the backup. However, in iOS 10 the files are contained in sub-folders which can make the file difficult to find. Now it just makes it all a little bit easier for iOS 10 backups.
• Improvement The lists on the left pane of the software (Photo Streams, Devices, Password Needed) now have "Show" and "Hide" buttons at hover. This will avoid clutter on the left and make it easier to see what you want, when you want it. We have implemented this only for Windows users as Mac users had a better experience since some time ago.
• Improvement We are working on the speed of Photo previews; displaying all of the images will be getting a little quicker with every release. This week the display time for Photo previews in encrypted backups is a little better. Soon they will be there before you take the photo.
• Improvement We have cleaned up the file menu and grouped the similar options into smaller sub-menus to make everything easier. The file menu is a lot cleaner, shorter and organised.
• Improvement We updated all of the icons in AppView to the newest and most beautiful icon for each app. They just look so pretty now.
• Improvement The file menu has had a busy week. For Windows users, We have added the familiar icons to each of the categories so you can pick the data category just by looking at the icon. I mean, who’s got time to read nowadays anyway.
• Fix Mac users will be happy when they’ll see We fixed the hovering ‘To avoid incomplete backups disconnect this device before downloading’ warning message. When iPhone Backup Extractor was resized the message would hover around the middle of the window like a UFO. Now it stays where is should all the time.

• Fix We fixed a crash that you got if you moved or deleted an offline iOS backup while having that same iOS backup opened in iPhone Backup Extractor. We now show you a polite error message and allow you to continue with your work.
• Fix We fixed the iOS 10+ iTunes backups file dates bug; the dates would be shown as 400 years in the past. Now that the timestamp conversion is correct there will be no more pictures from the first performance of Hamlet. That’s a shame.
• Fix Another time related bug was squashed with iCloud backup times returning to the correct local time. If you would like to continue seeing what time your backup occurred in London then you will need to use a time conversion tool.
• Fix A bug which stopped users from recovering their photos from iPhone 7 iTunes backups has been fixed. If you were trying to extract in albums then new tables were being added to the database which confused the extractor. Now you can extract all the photos without a problem.
• Fix We stopped a missing backup file causing a Null Reference Exception crash; we can’t magic up the file, but we can stop the software from crashing. You should receive a gentle message if the file is missing.
• Fix We fixed the Expert Mode file tree which split branches from SysSharedContainer and SysContainer Domains. A number of folders were being scattered all over the file tree; you will now find that all the folders from these domains are contained in the right location.
• Fix We are now limiting the amount of tasks that can be submitted to the server. Essentially if 1,000 tasks are ready then we’re not submitting any more. This will help stop backlogs and provide a more efficient experience for all users.

• Improvement In what is a popular feature -- iCloud data download -- we've added more details to the iCloud download window process. This will give you a better idea of what is happening when iPhone Backup Extractor is downloading iCloud data. The new information is much clearer and you will see that tasks are being requested, are ready (for download), downloading, or completed. This is particularly helpful for large iOS backups which would otherwise display a slow moving progress bar.
• Fix We had some users report trouble when trying to right-click on files in "Expert Mode" for adding, replacing, or deleting files in the backup. There was some debate about whether they were right-clicking in the right way or if their right-clicking was wrong. We have fixed it so that every right-click is the right right-click.
• Fix We have fixed the bug that was misreporting the times and dates of iCloud files. Dates were being displayed as 19 years in the future (2035), but now everything has returned to normal. No more pictures from 2035 when apes rule the planet, just sit back and watch it unfold in real-time.
• Fix We fixed a System Overflow Exception bug causing iPhone Backup Extractor to crash when backups wouldn’t report the correct file size.
• Fix A minor cosmetic change with an update to the copyright year to 2017. 'Cos 2016 is over, innit?

• Improvement Updated plan names and device limits.
• Improvement Improved status information when downloading from iCloud.
• Improvement Improved reporting for licenses activated offline.

• Improvement Improved data extractions from iTunes iOS 10.1 backups.

• Improvement The iCloud download mechanism has been replaced to make it more reliable, particularly for large backups.

• Improvement Improved password checking mechanism for iTunes iOS 10.2 beta encrypted backups.

• Improvement Added support for iTunes iOS 10.2 beta encrypted backups.

We're releasing 7.3.6.1416 for Windows users only.

• Improvement We've tweaked the installer slightly to help us better understand how well it is working.
• Fix We've added a failsafe for our error handling process.

Today's release includes two small updates.

• Fix We've made a number of internal changes to iPhone Backup Extractor's error tracking and alerting.
• Fix You'd not believe the "maximise" button in an app could cause a problem, would you? Well, it did on Windows. And now we've fixed it. Let's move on and forget about this one.

• Improvement Added support for encrypted backup for the latest iOS 10.1 beta.
• Improvement Added support for expert mode (adding, deleting, and replacing files) for iOS 10 iTunes backups.
• Fix Fixed XML exception caused by password mis-match when opening encrypted iOS 10 iTunes backups.

• Fix Fixed Error 32 for iCloud downloads which was causing iCloud backups to report missing files.
• Fix Fixed error for backups with missing files.
• Fix Improved the HTML rendering library to fix errors on Windows.

• Feature For Mac users we have added a warning message to stop large backups being overwritten.
• Improvement Improved the Restrictions PIN extraction from encrypted iTunes backups.
• Improvement Added support for newest version on Hike.
• Fix Fixed Hike message extraction.
• Fix Fixed NullReferenceException crash in Expert Mode.

• Improvement Improved experience for iOS 10 digital touch attachments previews.
• Improvement Improvements iMessages usernames extraction.
• Improvement iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, and iPhone SE are now correctly identified.
• Improvement Improved Man menus when viewing an iPhone connected to a computer.
• Improvement Improved images counter for both iTunes and iCloud backups.

• Improvement Improved SMS recovery for non-English messages.
• Improvement Improved support for messages recovery on older iOS versions.
• Improvement Improved support for SMS, Hike, and Line messages extraction.
• Improvement New look for backups loader in the Windows version.
• Improvement Improved filtering system for deleted messages in Windows Preview mode.
• Improvement Redesigned the Welcome screen for Mac.
• Improvement Improved the design of the Contact screen on Mac.
• Fix Fixed Viber messages extraction.

• Feature Added support for iOS 10 digital touch attachments.
• Improvement Improved design on Windows.
• Improvement Improved SMS extractions.

• Improvement Improved progress bar notification on Mac.
• Fix Fixed iCloud login freeze.
• Fix Fixes for grouping SMS and WhatsApp messages.

• Improvement Improved speed in App View mode.
• Improvement Improved welcome screen on startup.
• Improvement Improved messages grouping.
• Improvement Redesigned scrollbars.
• Improvement Updated icons in App View mode.
• Improvement Redesigned Photo Stream and iCloud full backup.
• Improvement Redesigned path rename dialog on extracting data.
• Fix Fixed Photo Stream bug in free edition.

• Improvement Improved user interface. Hurrah! 🎉
• Improvement Redesign for multiple sections.

Today we're soft-launching the new UI for iPhone Backup Extractor. What do you think of it? We'd love to read your feedback. There's more to come, but today you'll see:

• Feature The message previewer now supports group messages.
• Improvement A new look for local back up folder selection and the iCloud account selection window.
• Improvement A new look iCloud login and 2FA window.
• Improvement A reworked encrypted backup screen.
• Improvement The progress screens have been completely redone for both downloading and loading backups.
• Improvement All sorts of interface tweaks scattered through the app. Can you spot them?

We're testing a new look and feel for iPhone Backup Extractor, and this version is the same as 7.1.3.1258 -- but with the new interface. Some users will get it and some won't. Don't worry if you're not one of them!

We're testing a new look and feel for iPhone Backup Extractor, and this version is the same as 7.1.2.1238 -- but with the new interface. Some users will get it and some won't. Don't worry if you're not one of them!

We're testing a new look and feel for iPhone Backup Extractor, and this version is the same as 7.1.1.1215 -- but with the new interface. Some users will get it and some won't. Don't worry if you're not one of them!

• Improvement Improved Photo Stream recovery experience for iCloud backups.
• Improvement Improved application launch speed.
• Improvement Improved SMS/messages extraction path.
• Improvement Improved preview for group messages extractions.
• Improvement Design tweaks.
• Fix Fixed SQLite exceptions related bugs.

• Improvement Text messages and iMessages are now grouped and extracted in the same location.
• Improvement Improved stability for iOS 10 backups.
• Improvement Improved Location data count.
• Improvement Improved Replace File functionality in Expert Mode.
• Improvement SMS is now Messages in all available tabs.
• Improvement Additional check for the available disk space before downloading a backup file.

We're preparing to test some interface changes to iPhone Backup Extractor, and this release is the start of that process.

• Improvement We've changed how we track visits to our site's checkout from the app.

• Improvement Added iOS 9 default mode for new users.
• Improvement iOS 9 and iOS 8 radio buttons have been swapped around.

• Improvement Improved support for iOS 10 backups on Mac.
• Improvement Updated certificates for Windows XP and Vista.

• Improvement Updated certificates for Windows 7 and up.

• Improvement Improved support for iOS 10 backups on Windows.

• Improvement Improved speed for Contacts, SMS, and WhatsApp extractions and previews loading.
• Improvement Improved design and clarity for subscription options.
• Fix Date of the messages and preview set to local time.

We're thrilled to be releasing iPhone Backup Extractor 7. This represents the culmination of much hard work. After our preparation and careful research we've been able to release support for iOS 10, both for local and for iCloud backups, fewer than 24 hours of the Apple's first developer previews shipping. We celebrate this launch with a short post on our blog.

• Feature Added iOS 10 support for local and iCloud backup access.