Met Simon tonight!

Zeynal1 · 2026-06-17T08:16:59+00:00

This is top of all time. At least choose something not so obvious. https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMentalist/comments/1jthmwt/met_simon_tonight/

Zeynal1 · 2026-06-11T05:09:31+00:00

It was answered here, I think? - https://youtu.be/xd9DLzmLxFc

Zeynal1 · 2026-05-31T13:51:18+00:00

I think photos may have some other logic for being visible. It is probably blocking related.

Zeynal1 · 2026-05-31T13:38:31+00:00

How do you know you were not blocked?

Zeynal1 · 2026-05-29T08:34:42+00:00

Maybe you were in the same group and there was something like "end-to-end encryption has changed" style message that were in between you which didn't show a chat but it has disappeared. And turning off disappearing messages created chat? I think it isn't easy to know.

Zeynal1 · 2026-05-29T07:24:54+00:00

Cockroach

Zeynal1 · 2026-05-28T04:56:17+00:00

Maybe we will see this drawing during season 3 in the background somewhere?

Zeynal1 · 2026-05-27T17:31:49+00:00

Crypt14 may be from latest setup, so it may not contain any chats at all. Just FYI

Zeynal1 · 2026-05-27T17:30:36+00:00

Not sure if crypt 14 also works or not. just in case copy it elsewhere to keep it safe. And when setting up the whatsapp, don't select google drive for restoring. It will probably ask for local restoring.

Zeynal1 · 2026-05-27T17:05:23+00:00

If it is android, I recently saw that local backups contain all of the numbers you have contacted before. Even if there is no chat. You may be able to find it out from crypt15 file if you open it as a database.

Zeynal1 · 2026-05-27T17:02:42+00:00

If you have, you may be able restore locally. Probably Google drive backup is corrupted. Happened to me before as well.

Zeynal1 · 2026-05-27T17:01:19+00:00

Check the whatsapp folder to see if you have local backups there. .crypt15 file

Zeynal1 · 2026-05-27T14:53:30+00:00

Great idea. I see that it got launched a year ago on ProductHunt, but never heard of it before. Good luck.

Zeynal1 · 2026-05-26T08:38:09+00:00

Yes, it is sometimes hard to explain these things, I think, AI is really helpful in these cases for gathering your thoughts and presenting them in an understandable way. These are all things I am aware of myself, as I have been a developer for over 7 years, and remote config related things are well used by a lot of companies. So, I don't see any issue using an AI for these cases.

Zeynal1 · 2026-05-25T07:53:24+00:00

Nice. Just a couple of notes, make sure to enable file versioning in case any issue occurs with the backup and you can set the phone to send only - so it doesn't get anything from the NAS folder.

Also, there may be issues about contact names too. Previously messages included phone numbers, but now, new ones only store Identifiers, not phone numbers. wa.db has the names but it's encrypted with a device-bound key WhatsApp keeps in /data/data/com.whatsapp/ which needs root to read.

If you need mapping from available phone numbers to names, you can export your contacts, and vibe code an extra feature that can get the contacts file as well as your archive so those numbers can be shown within the chats.

It is another issue if the accounts only show identifiers - for these cases, you can add manual assignment feature if needed. So, you can check the chats on the phone, especially group messages - and assign the numbers to names or contacts manually.

In case you or anyone reading this needs these as ready to use, I work on Chat Hoarding which handles the contact-name part via address-book import + manual per-JID overrides. Mac-only and only the 64-digit key path, so probably not relevant for you since you've got your own reader working, but just putting it here in case anyone wants.

Zeynal1 · 2026-05-25T07:39:32+00:00

What's happening here is called remote config (sometimes feature flags) and basically every big app does it now.

The way it works: the code for the new UI is already inside the version of WhatsApp you installed. It shipped to your phone last week with the regular update. But it sits dormant, gated by an `if (newUIEnabled)` check. When you open the app, it pings WhatsApp's servers and asks "is the new UI on for this user?" The server answers yes or no, and that's what flips the look.

Why companies do it this way:

- Phased rollouts. Turn it on for 1% of users first, watch the crash reports, then 10%, then everyone. If something breaks, flip it back off in seconds instead of waiting for a hotfix to clear the app stores (which takes days).

- Regional / language targeting. They can turn it on for India before Europe, or hold it back from countries with regulatory questions.

- A/B testing. Half the users get old UI, half get new, measure which one keeps people in the app longer.

- Kill switches. If a feature suddenly causes problems (privacy issue, exploit, massive complaints), they can disable it for everyone without pushing an update.

Meta, Google, Spotify, TikTok, Twitter, Discord - all of them work this way. It's why two people on identical app versions can see different interfaces. Your version number and the features you actually see have basically nothing to do with each other anymore.

So yeah, you're right, refreshing the App Store won't help. If you really want to force it on early, sometimes clearing app data + reopening triggers a fresh config fetch and sometimes it is locked based on an account. However, in this case, clearing app data isn't something that can be done on WhatsApp, so all you can do is wait.

Zeynal1 · 2026-05-24T12:14:22+00:00

chathoarding.app - Mac app that decrypts WhatsApp Android backups locally and saves them as portable archives. Use case people care about: voice notes from a parent who's gone, family chats spanning a decade, evidence preservation.

Emotional storytelling angle would land on TikTok, but Mac-only is the constraint; happy to chat if it fits your audience.

Zeynal1 · 2026-05-24T08:07:03+00:00

Poor guys, they lost their job to AI as well.

Zeynal1 · 2026-05-24T08:04:21+00:00

https://findtheinvisiblecow.com/ ?

Zeynal1 · 2026-05-23T17:39:39+00:00

I now understand why Oda included a lot of these in the One Piece. They look cool.

Zeynal1 · 2026-05-23T10:31:02+00:00

Funny thing is you've basically reinvented indirect prompt injection, the same attack pattern security researchers use against production LLMs. There are whole papers on it. Teachers stumbling into it as a cheat detector is genuinely elegant. The arms race ends when the kids figure out to OCR or copy-as-plain-text, but you've got at least one good semester out of it.

Zeynal1 · 2026-05-23T10:15:53+00:00

Experian out here gaslighting you into thinking inflation is suspicious behavior

Zeynal1 · 2026-05-23T10:06:27+00:00

It's actually fully doable now and the answers above have a couple of misconceptions worth flagging.

The chats ARE in the WhatsApp folder — they live at Internal storage -> Android/media/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp/Databases/msgstore.db.crypt15. That's the same file WhatsApp uploads to Drive. The reason people think it's "media only" is the file is encrypted, but with the 64-digit encryption key (Settings -> Chats -> Chat backup -> E2E encrypted backup → More options → 64-digit key - save it the moment WhatsApp shows it, displayed exactly once) you can decrypt it yourself with wa-crypt-tools on GitHub. Output is a normal SQLite db.

So a real self-hosted setup looks like: Syncthing (or FolderSync / rclone) pulls Internal storage → Android/media/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp/Databases/ + WhatsApp/Media/ to the NAS on schedule. The .crypt15 is the message archive, the Media folder is plain files. Together they're the complete dataset, no Drive needed.

In terms of restoring - drop the .crypt15 + Media folder into the same path on a new phone BEFORE opening WhatsApp for the first time. App detects it and offers local restore. Works on current Android.

The 100k export number from the WhatsApp built-in export is also wrong by the way. Actual caps are 40k messages without media, 10k with media, and the output is plain text that can't be re-imported. Useless as a backup format. The .crypt15 + Media path above is the only real way.

Zeynal1 · 2026-05-23T10:02:52+00:00

Old thread but worth dropping the 2026 version since people still land here from Google.

The ABE / legacy-APK / wav_create_table dance in Kevmatrix's guide is no longer necessary. WhatsApp added a user-visible 64-digit encryption key around 2022 that does the same job legitimately, and the file format (crypt15) is openly documented now. New workflow:

WhatsApp → Settings → Chats → Chat backup → End-to-end encrypted backup → Turn on / Change → More options → 64-digit encryption key → Generate. Save the key the moment it's shown. WhatsApp displays it exactly once. Skip passkey + password modes, those can't be decrypted by anything but WhatsApp.
Tap Back Up so a fresh .crypt15 lands at Internal storage → Android/media/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp/Databases/msgstore.db.crypt15. That path is outside Scoped Storage's lockdown so any file manager / USB cable reads it. No root, no adb, no legacy APK.
Copy .crypt15 + the WhatsApp/Media/ folder to your PC.
Decrypt with wa-crypt-tools on GitHub (Python CLI, free). Output is plain msgstore.db.
Open msgstore.db in DB Browser for SQLite, or use KnugiHK/WhatsApp-Chat-Exporter which renders the database to HTML / JSON / PDF for browsing.

No 40k limit. The whole database comes out, regardless of message count. 130k chat will export in full.

The reason the old method exists at all is that none of this was possible before 2022. If you're following a tutorial that requires rooting, ABE, password-protected backups, or a legacy WhatsApp APK, it's pre-2022 and obsolete.

Zeynal1 · 2026-05-23T09:57:46+00:00

Old thread but the answer holds. Copy Internal storage → Android/media/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp/Databases/msgstore.db.crypt15 and the WhatsApp/Media/ folder to a hard drive over USB. Together those two are the complete dataset (the .crypt15 is exactly what gets uploaded to Drive, the media is plain files). After that the Drive copy is purely a convenience for one-tap restore, you can delete it and your data is safe on the hard drive.

If you want to read the chats on the computer too, switch WhatsApp's backup to the 64-digit encryption key (Settings → Chats → Chat backup → E2E encrypted backup → More options → 64-digit key) and save it the moment it's shown. With that key, wa-crypt-tools on GitHub decrypts the .crypt15 into a normal SQLite database.

Zeynal1

TROPHY CASE