katok-windows
카카오톡 로컬 대화 검색 CLI katok의 Windows 지원 포크 — 공식 대화 내보내기(.txt) 기반. keyword/BM25/semantic 검색.
A Windows fork of katok, a local search tool for your own KakaoTalk chats, using keyword, BM25, and semantic search over files you export yourself.
katok-windows is a Windows version of a command line tool called katok, which lets you search your own KakaoTalk chat history entirely on your own computer using keyword search, BM25 ranked search, and semantic search based on meaning. None of the conversation data is sent to any server. This project is a fork of the original macOS only tool, NomaDamas/katok, extended so it also works on Windows. The underlying search engine, text chunking, and archive format are identical to the original; only the way messages get into the tool is different on Windows.
An important clarification in the README: cloning this repository does not give you the same automatic experience as on macOS, where the app reads a whole KakaoTalk chat database on its own. On Windows, the tool only works with files you export yourself using KakaoTalk's official conversation export feature, saved as a text file, which you then index and search. It cannot automatically read the full KakaoTalk local database the way the macOS version does, and this is a deliberate choice. The README explains that Windows KakaoTalk protects its chat database far more strongly than macOS does, including a commercial packer called Themida that makes the app very hard to analyze. Bypassing that protection could also expose messages from other people in group chats who never agreed to it, raising privacy and legal concerns under Korean law. So this fork sticks to the safe, official export based path only.
To use it on Windows, you install Rust, clone the repository, and build it with cargo build --release, which produces a katok executable. Windows builds use plain SQLite so no extra setup like OpenSSL is needed. To search a conversation, you export a chat room from KakaoTalk as a text file, then run a sync command pointing at that file, and after that you can run keyword, BM25, or semantic search commands, plus a command to view more context around a result. The tool supports both the newer and older KakaoTalk export text formats, and timestamps are stored using Korea Standard Time.
The project is licensed under MIT, with the original search engine credited to NomaDamas/katok.
Where it fits
- Search your own exported KakaoTalk conversation for a specific message or contract detail.
- Find a chat by meaning using semantic search when you cannot remember the exact wording.
- Keep chat search entirely local and offline instead of relying on the KakaoTalk app.
- Build a Windows CLI tool that indexes and queries an exported text conversation file.