Jupyter notebook with examples on how to visualize the dataset of personal texts 📱, after extracting from an iPhone with PhoneView.
This notebook shows how to visualize the number of text
messages exchanged (with a specific person, or overall), and the volume of characters
exchanged.
It is surprising to notice how much information can be extracted from the visualization
of the patterns of communication alone—without the contents of the messages. For
instance, in the example above, it is clear that the person sending messages (in green)
is more invested in the relationship: In the rescaled plot, we can see that in
the beginning, both of the correspondents are responsible for about 50% of the messages;
but this trend quickly changes over time.
PhoneView: This is the app I recommend to
extract text messages from your iPhone. It is able to handle SMS, iMessage and WhatsApp
seamlessly. It costs $29.95 for a Lifetime License, and has been available and reliable
since 2008—but there is also a trial version that will work for this.
Jupyter Notebook and pandas: These are the tools I use in this notebook to analyze
and plot my text messages.
For Windows computers, you can use iExplorer;
for Android phones, you can use the SMS Backup and Restore
app.
Read this DigitalTrends article
for more information. The notebook provided here may need to be adapted.