How to export a WhatsApp chat

On iPhone

The export option lives in the chat's info screen, not in Settings.

1. 1Open the chat you want to export.
2. 2Tap the contact or group name at the top of the screen.
3. 3Scroll to the bottom and tap Export Chat.
4. 4Choose Without media for a small text file, or With all media to include photos, videos and voice notes. With selected media lets you pick.
5. 5Pick Save to Files (or send it to yourself by email or AirDrop). You get a .zip file.

On Android

On Android the option is in the chat menu.

1. 1Open the chat.
2. 2Tap the three dots in the top right corner, then More.
3. 3Tap Export chat.
4. 4Choose Without media or Include media.
5. 5Save the file to Google Drive, Files or send it to yourself. You get a .txt file, or a .zip when media is included.

What is inside the export

A plain text file with one line per message: the date, the time, the sender's name as saved on the exporting phone, and the text. iPhone names it _chat.txt inside a .zip; Android names it after the chat.

If you included media, the photos, videos, voice notes and documents sit next to the text file, and each message points to its file by name.

The text file is hard to read on its own: long chats run to thousands of lines, times use the phone's language settings and media shows up as file names. That is what a viewer is for.

Things to know before you export

Very long chats can take a while to export. WhatsApp's older help page capped exports at 10,000 recent messages with media and 40,000 without; the current page lists no limit. If older messages seem missing, export again without media.

WhatsApp Web, Windows and Mac can export chats too. Web and Windows exports leave media out, and nobody can export a chat that has Restricted chat turned on.

Backups to iCloud or Google Drive are not exports. They are encrypted and can only be restored inside WhatsApp, so other tools cannot open them.

Exports contain everyone's messages in the chat, so store and share them with care.

Open it as a readable chat

Drop the .zip or .txt into chatview and it opens as real chat bubbles you can search, filter by date and person, and redact. Nothing is uploaded; your browser reads the file.

From there you can save a clean PDF with page numbers, an Evidence Pack for a lawyer, an Excel sheet, or your Chat Wrapped.

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