BeautifyWhatsAppExport
Turn a raw WhatsApp chat export into a single self-contained HTML page that looks like the real thing.
What it does
Point it at a WhatsApp chat export folder. Get back a single HTML file that renders the conversation in WhatsApp’s actual UI — real message bubbles, tails, date separators, inline media, clickable links, full-screen image viewer. Works without an internet connection once generated.
python main.py "./WhatsApp Chat" --you "Lakshay" --embed-imagesWhy I built it
WhatsApp’s “export chat” feature hands you a zip file with a .txt
transcript and a bunch of media files. Useful if you’re a computer.
Unreadable if you’re trying to show someone a conversation. I wanted
to hand someone a single file that felt like opening WhatsApp itself.
Stack & decisions
Python standard library only. No pip install, no virtualenv. The parsing is regex over the export format; the HTML generation is templated string assembly. Zero dependencies means this still runs in five years.
Inline everything. CSS, JavaScript, and optionally images are embedded directly into the output HTML. One file, fully portable. You can email it, drop it on a USB stick, open it on any browser.
Pixel-matched WhatsApp UI. Message bubble tails, the exact green, the system message pills, date separators — reproduced in pure CSS. This was the fun part.
What I learned
- “Zero dependencies” is a real feature for a tool that people will use once every six months. Every dependency is a reason it won’t work when they come back to it.
- The WhatsApp export format is surprisingly well-behaved for regex parsing, but multi-line messages and system notifications need careful handling.
- Embedding base64 images bloats file size dramatically; it should be a flag, not a default.