You can export your Hangouts chat history on takeout.google.com. The resulting H...

You can export your Hangouts chat history on takeout.google.com. The resulting Hangsouts.json file is human-readable but not fun to read. I have a one-liner to convert it into something nicer, but it doesn't resolve user names and you need to figure out the conversation ID you want to export yourself.

    jq -c '.conversations[] | select(.conversation.conversation_id.id == "YOUNEEDTOFILLTHISINYOURSELF") | .events[] | [(.timestamp | tonumber / 1000000 + (9*3600)| strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S (%a)")), .sender_id.gaia_id, [.chat_message.message_content.segment[]?.text], .chat_message.message_content.attachment[]?.embed_item?.plus_photo?.url?]' Hangouts.json | sort > foo.log

When you open Hangouts.json, you'll see that every conversation has something like this at the beginning:

    "conversation_id": { "id": "BASE64-LIKE_STRING" }

This BASE64-LIKE_STRING belongs into the YOUNEEDTOFILLTHISINYOURSELF placeholder.