I recently did this (Edit: import) via sqlite for somebody, the iOS->Android direction, but with knowledge about both databases schema you can go both ways. Whatsapp also has the I->A route in beta for some time too?

There are some preconditions, it's not the easiest, but "no 3rd party" required so to speak

Aside: Moving from Android to iOS is possible using Watoi although it is highly convoluted.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/307596/364945

We have (had?) IRC, it was basic but compared to the era it thrived in it was way better than what we have today, compared to what's possible today.

I don't know much about IRC, but isn't it about group chats, as opposed to instant messaging? Sure, it might be possible to have instant messages, but is that possible over server boundaries?

> it’s impossible to export chat history

There has been a "Chat export" option for years. I even exported a chat of mine and ran it through some sentiment analysis for fun.

> shared / imported history between iOS and Android

Yeah this is perplexing. Android to android it works fine. The moment you throw Ios into the mix it gets complicated.

My understanding is that WhatsApp uses a different database between android and iOS and I guess they never figured out a good UX for converting between them. It’s shockingly ridiculous for something owned by Facebook.

> There has been a "Chat export" option for years. I even exported a chat of mine and ran it through some sentiment analysis for fun.

You've to do it manually for every chat, and it lacks all media. From the context of preserving your chat history, it's just marginally better than having nothing.

> There has been a "Chat export" option for years.

Except where they disable it, like in Germany (but haven't followed up on that story if it was resolved)

edit: seems to no longer be the case, time to run some backups!

Just another day in the walled garden.

> One day we will have a popular open protocol and client for instant messaging. One day…

We have. It's called Matrix.

That last sentiment would be very nice indeed, but I fear this is what we'll get instead:

https://xkcd.com/927/

Closed IM protocols aren’t standards so this doesn’t really apply. There’s only three realistic “standards” in instant messaging: irc, xmpp and matrix. IRC is essentially dead, xmpp is on its last leg and mostly irrelevant, and matrix is very promising just not popular enough yet.

XMPP is widely deployed and it's the backbone of WhatsApp, you don't see a lot of servers that openly federate XMPP because there's little business incentive to do so.

Xmpp can continue being a server side protocol all you want, it doesn’t make it a user facing protocol. So in terms of federated or at least cross compatible IM clients it’s irrelevant.

Doesn't Apple implement XMPP for iMessage as well?

> xmpp is on its last leg

Why? Unlike Matrix it's actually an Internet Standard.

It's had about 20 years to hit the bigtime, I think we can safely say it's not going to happen.

A mere protocol will never "hit the bigtime" without some compelling (non-protocol) reason. It's unfortunate that businesses choose to build silos time and time again, but that's where we are - it's not an issue that can be solved at the protocol level.

Should this be fixed (e.g. through regulation), XMPP is absolutely a sound choice - given, as you say, its 20 years of experience, evolution and deployment track record.

honestly, given the current adoption, growth and state of the ecosystem, I don't think it is.

In theory, you could achieve with it what Matrix achieves, but it would probably be more feasible to start from scratch - like Matrix did

That said, I see how it currently has advantages when it comes to resource consumption as well as internal deployment to centralized services.

So what is the bigtime open messaging standard?

there isn't any.

But if I would have to bet on a standard which could become it right now, then it would be Matrix.

It convinces when it comes to adoption, concept, features and growth.

> argument from authority

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

XKCD should make a comic about pre-emptively 927'ing any suggestion to improve something.

It doesn't mean don't bother improving something, just don't expect everyone to switch to it.

Having hardly anyone switch to a new standard when there are existing ones could actually be considered a good thing. The problem comes when the new standard is promoted, inevitably fails to become dominant and ends up making the problem worse.

Note that sometimes new standards are promoted specifically to destroy an existing open standard. The trick is to push hard for the new standard until it gets sort of popular and then back off. Adjust as required to keep things balanced.