Discord downloader

Simple utilities to download Discord chat logs and fetch all the attachments (pictures and videos). It can be used both for Discord servers (group chats) and for direct messages (private conversations). The code is portable and it should run under most operating systems.

How to use it

Download the whole chat history with discord-fetch.py. It will download the channel history at a rate of 100 messages per GET request, which is the maximum allowed by the Discord API. It is the only command that requires an internet connection to work. It might be slow if there are several messages to fetch. The other commands use the output of this command.

./discord-fetch.py auth_token channel_id > john_doe.json

If the history is huge, it might be convenient to fetch only the last messages up to a given timestamp. Timestamps are in localtime and they are formatted as YYYY-MM-DD HH:HH:SS.

./discord-fetch.py auth_token channel_id "2022-01-01 00:00:00" > history_2022.json

You can exploit this idea to update an old history file. Use discord-chatlog.py to see the timestamp of the last message in your old.json file, then fetch a new.json file using that timestamp and merge the two files together with jq -cs '.[0] + .[1]' new.json old.json > updated.json (see jq).

Get the chat log in plaintext

To get the chat log in plaintext you can use discord-chatlog.py. Like the other commands, it prints on standard output which is up to you to redirect. Timestamps are in localtime.

./discord-chatlog.py john_doe.json > john_doe.txt

Download all the attachments

To get a list of all the pictures and videos sent by someone you can use discord-attachments.py. To download the files you should pass the output of this command to your favorite download manager. The following example uses wget.

./discord-attachments.py john_doe.json author_id > urls.txt
wget -i urls.txt  # whatever it is your favorite download manager

You can get a list of usernames with their author_id with the following command.

./discord-attachments.py john_doe.json

Where is my auth_token?

Open discord from your browser and log in with your account. Open the web developer tools of your browser (ctrl + shift + i or f12) and follow the steps as per the figure:

1. click on the Network tab;
2. write api library in the "Filter URLs" field and make sure you selected "All";
3. refresh the web page (f5 or ctrl + r) and select the only request you see;
4. in the Headers tab, write authorization in the "Filter Headers" field.

Where is the channel_id?

Open discord from your browser, log in and look at the urlbar while you are chatting with someone. In direct messages you are visiting https://discord.com/channels/@me/<channel_id>. In a group chat you are visiting https://discord.com/channels/<server_id>/<channel_id>.