What’s in an EvidentlySo PDF

One conversation, one date range

Each PDF holds one conversation, over one unbroken stretch of time: from a start date or message to an end date or message. No dates are skipped inside it. Two conversations, or two separate periods, make two PDFs.

The PDF is made from the messages saved in the app for that conversation. Saving adds new messages and never removes what’s already saved, so a message saved and later deleted on the phone still appears.

Page 1

Page 1 is a short header, set out like a plain document. The messages start on page 2. The header has the title and the Transcript ID, then:

• Participants: the phone’s owner, marked “phone owner”, and everyone else in the conversation, each with their number.
• Dates: the first message to the last message. If dates or messages were chosen, this line gives what was chosen instead.
• Contents: how many messages, photos, videos, voice messages and other files.
• Phone: the phone’s model and system version.
• Time zone: the time zone every time in the PDF is shown in.
• Generated: when the PDF was generated.

The PDF doesn’t say when the messages were saved.

Dates and times

Times are the phone’s recorded times, shown to the second in the time zone named on page 1, for example “All times are in Mountain Time (MST or MDT, depending on the date).” Each day starts with its date. The one exception is the hour that happens twice when clocks go back in the fall: there, times carry MST or MDT so the two can be told apart.

Message numbers

Each PDF has a Transcript ID (such as T4250) and each message has a number (such as MSG-012). Cite a message with both, for example “T4250 MSG-012”. Numbers belong to this PDF; another PDF of the same conversation may number messages differently.

Names and numbers

The phone owner’s name and number come from the owner or the phone itself. Other people’s numbers come from the messages; their names come from the phone’s contacts. If a contact has no saved name, only the number is shown. Each message line shows the sender’s name, their number (for people other than the phone’s owner), the date, the time and the message number.

Pictures

Photos appear where they were sent, scaled to fit the page, never cropped. A message with several photos shows them together. Each photo’s file name is printed under it. A photo the snapshots list but don’t hold a copy of shows as a dashed box saying “Photo not available”, with its file name.

Videos, voice messages and files

A video shows as a still with a play mark and its length. Voice messages, files such as PDFs, and contact cards appear as simple boxes. A video the snapshots don’t hold a copy of shows as “Video not available”.

What each phone records

A PDF shows what the phone’s own message storage records, and that differs between phones.

• Android: the text of each message, photos, videos, voice messages and files. Android’s message storage doesn’t keep reactions, replies, edits, unsent messages, group changes or link previews, so Android PDFs don’t show them. A reaction sent as an ordinary text, such as “Liked …”, appears as a message, word for word, as it does on the phone.
• iPhone: the same. Reactions, replies and edits aren’t shown yet. They’re planned for iPhone messages read with the desktop app.

Checking the file

Every page’s footer has “Check this file at EvidentlySo.com/Verify”, the Transcript ID and page number, and a record code. On Verify a PDF, anyone can check that a PDF is the exact file EvidentlySo generated. Any change makes a new file that won’t match, even printing it to PDF or saving it again from a viewer.

Keeping a PDF verifiable · Verify a PDF

What a PDF doesn’t include

• Other conversations, and dates outside the PDF’s range.
• Messages deleted from the phone before they were first saved.
• Messages the phone didn’t make available to the app, such as some encrypted chat (RCS) messages.
• Messages from other apps, such as WhatsApp or Signal.

The app saves a copy of the messages; it isn’t a forensic image of the phone.