I want to create a fully interactive, offline snapshot of my WhatsApp messages, including media, that I can open on a computer without needing an internet connection. Ideally, it would be a self-contained app or an emulator-like setup where I can browse chats as if I were still using WhatsApp.
I have access to my WhatsApp data and backups, but I’m looking for a way to convert that into a usable format. Do you know if there any existing tool, open-source software, or method to achieve this?
My best guess is to just create a virtual machine, install desktop whatsapp, and then never connect to the internet. But I think the app dosen't store my database locally, and rely on making requests to a server to get old messages - like the browser Webwhatsapp. So that wouldn't work.
Another options is to use this, but it requires me to have the key file that whats-app stores locally on my device, which requires root to be extracted. So I guess that's the only option? I wonder what other creative ideas people had for this situation.
Also, my device is not rooted.