Snapback

A local Snapchat archive viewer. Processes your Snapchat data export into a browsable day-by-day chat viewer with a stats dashboard.

How it works

Phase 1 — splitter.py reads your Snapchat ZIP export(s), correlates media files to messages by timestamp, fetches Bitmoji avatars, and writes one conversations.json + web viewer per calendar day into output/days/. It also generates output/dashboard.html with aggregate stats and an activity heatmap.

Phase 2 — web/ is a static vanilla JS frontend (no build step) that's copied into every day folder. Open any day's index.html via a local server to browse conversations.

Setup

pip install requests tqdm

Place your Snapchat export ZIP(s) in input/ before running. Multiple ZIPs are supported — the primary export (mydata~*.zip) and any numbered continuations (mydata~*-1.zip, -2.zip, …) are all merged automatically.

Usage

# Full run — processes ZIPs, fetches Bitmoji avatars, writes output/
python3 splitter.py

# Skip Bitmoji fetching (faster, uses coloured ghost SVGs as fallbacks)
python3 splitter.py --no-bitmoji

Then serve the output directory:

cd output && python3 -m http.server 8080

Open http://localhost:8080/dashboard.html for the stats overview, or navigate directly to http://localhost:8080/days/YYYY-MM-DD/index.html for any day.

Output structure

output/
├── dashboard.html          ← aggregate stats + activity heatmap
└── days/
    └── YYYY-MM-DD/
        ├── index.html      ← day viewer (copy of web/)
        ├── conversation.js ← embedded JSON for this day
        ├── styles.css
        ├── js/
        ├── media/          ← snaps and chat media for this day
        ├── bitmoji/        ← avatars for users active this day
        └── orphaned/       ← media that couldn't be matched to a message

Project structure

splitter.py         ← backend pipeline (single file, ~600 lines)
ghost.svg           ← fallback avatar shape
update_templates.py ← utility: re-copies web/ into existing day folders
                      without re-running the full pipeline
web/
├── index.html      ← day viewer shell + Video.js + custom CSS
├── styles.css      ← Tailwind 3.4 pre-compiled + custom overrides
├── dashboard.html  ← dashboard template (DASHBOARD_DATA placeholder)
└── js/
    ├── main.js         ← entry point, nav wiring, Video.js init
    ├── config.js       ← JSON → UI data structures, per-user colours
    ├── ui.js           ← message bubbles, media rendering, conversation list
    ├── utils.js        ← timestamp parsing, relative time, SVG icons
    ├── audio-player.js ← canvas waveform, Web Audio API, speed control
    └── lightbox.js     ← full-screen media overlay, prev/next nav

Notes

• Timestamps: ZIP central-directory 0x5455 extra fields are used to recover real file modification times rather than extraction times.
• Media matching: each media file is matched to the nearest message within a 30-second window; a 5-second penalty per already-matched message spreads media across messages when multiple files have similar timestamps.
• Groups: conversation IDs containing - are treated as group chats.
• Owner detection: inferred from the first outgoing (IsSender: true) message in the chat history.
• The output/ and input/ directories are gitignored — they contain personal data.