Hey everyone! 👋 I’m Muhammad Salman, and I built ChatCanvas. A few weeks ago, I wanted to read through an old WhatsApp chat I had exported. But if you’ve ever tried to do this, you know exactly what happens: WhatsApp spits out a massive, unreadable .txt file and a messy folder of scattered images. Trying to read it in Notepad completely kills the nostalgia. I couldn’t find a decent viewer that didn’t require me to upload my highly private conversations to some random server, so I decided to build one myself. My goal with ChatCanvas was to make revisiting your memories feel magical again, without compromising your privacy. Here’s what it can do: 🔒 100% Private (No Servers): You literally just drag and drop your exported chat into the browser. The entire .txt file is parsed and rendered locally on your machine. We never see your messages. ✨ A Beautiful, Native-Feeling UI: It doesn’t look like a raw text dump. It renders like a sleek desktop app, complete with chat bubbles, timestamps, and smooth scrolling. 🖼️ Built-in Media Gallery: All those scattered images and videos? ChatCanvas automatically links them back up and organizes them into a clean gallery tab, right next to your links and docs. 🔍 Instant Search: Need to find a specific message from 3 years ago? The built-in search is lightning fast. 🤫 Secret 'Vault' Chats: If you need to share a sensitive chat with a client or partner, you can lock a specific transcript behind a password so only they can view it. 🔗 URL Support: You can also drop a direct link to a .zip export and it handles the extraction and parsing automatically. I really built this to solve my own frustration, but I hope some of you find it useful for preserving your own digital memories. Grab one of your old WhatsApp exports, drag it into ChatCanvas, and let me know what you think! I’ll be hanging out in the comments all day to answer questions and take feature requests. 👇

Chat Canvas

Revisit your WhatsApp chats in a beautiful, secure web UI.

Revisit your WhatsApp chats in a beautiful, secure web UI.