Exports iPhone messages (SMS, MMS, RCS and iMessage) and WhatsApp conversations into searchable PDF, TXT, HTML, CSV and RSMF. Everything runs on your own Windows PC. There is no account, no server and no upload.
Website: https://getchatexport.com Download: https://getchatexport.com/download/
Two sources, and only one of them needs an iPhone.
An iPhone backup made by Apple Devices or iTunes on the same PC, from iOS 11 up to the current release. ChatExport reads the backup folder that Apple's own software already wrote to your disk. It never signs in to anything and never asks for an Apple ID. Encrypted backups work: it asks for that password, uses it on your machine, and forgets it.
A WhatsApp "Export chat" file. WhatsApp writes that file itself, so an export made on an Android phone opens exactly like one made on an iPhone. That is the one part of the program that needs no iPhone, no backup and no cable.
Five formats: PDF, TXT, HTML, CSV and RSMF.
PDF comes in three themes. Chat View looks like the conversation. Court View is monochrome and formal, prints full timestamps with the time zone, sender numbers, delivery and read receipts and message numbering. Book View sets it as prose.
RSMF is for the recipient who does not read documents but ingests them: a container that eDiscovery platforms accept without re-keying. The format is documented in ChatExportKnowledge.
Every export is fingerprinted with SHA256, shown on the success screen and
written beside the file as <file>.sha256, in the form that sha256sum -c and
certutil -hashfile both accept.
The same invented conversation, written out in all five formats, is in
samples/ — with the SHA256 sidecars, so you can run the check
yourself before deciding whether the fingerprint means anything to you. It
deliberately contains an edited message, an unsent one and a deleted one
recovered from Recently Deleted, because those are the cases a transcript gets
argued about.
The document can be written in any of fourteen languages, and that choice is separate from the language of the program itself, which also speaks fourteen. Your messages are never translated. They appear as they were sent.
The current installer is on the website: https://getchatexport.com/download/, which also prints its SHA256 so you can check the file before you trust it.
Releases in this repository carry the change history, and
CHANGELOG.md collects it in one page. Assets attached to
releases up to 0.5.1 are older builds; the website always has the current one.
The installer has been signed since 0.5.1, with a timestamped Trusted Signing certificate, and every executable inside the package is signed too.
Windows SmartScreen can still warn you the first time you run it. That warning is Application Reputation, which counts how many people have downloaded a file rather than whether it carries a certificate, so a new certificate does not remove it. The download page explains what the warning means and how to verify the file yourself.
What you download is a free trial. It writes every format and reads encrypted backups. Each document carries a watermark on every page and stops at the 50 most recent messages in a conversation. There is no expiry date.
A one-time licence costs 34.99 USD and lifts both limits. There will never be a subscription. Licence keys are verified offline, so the program never contacts a server to check one. Thirty days to ask for the money back, no form and no questions.
- No macOS build yet. Windows 10 and Windows 11, 64-bit.
- It exports conversations. Call logs, contact lists, photo libraries and app data are deliberately out of scope.
- It cannot promise that a court will accept a document. Admissibility depends on your jurisdiction, the case and the judge, and software that promises otherwise should be treated with suspicion. What an export can do is remove the usual objections: the messages come from Apple's own backup rather than a photographed screen, the timestamps come from the record, the thread is complete rather than selected, and the file carries a fingerprint.
- It cannot recover what the phone no longer holds. Messages in Recently Deleted come back, which on iOS 16 and later is roughly the last 30 days. Older than that is gone from the phone, and no software brings it back.
The application source is closed and is not in this repository. What lives here is the release history and the issue tracker.
Notes on Apple's message format are open and live in
ChatExportKnowledge: the
sms.db schema from iOS 11 to 26, attributedBody, backup layout, encrypted
backups, the RSMF container, and what cannot be recovered.
Open an issue, or write to [email protected]. The program keeps local log files you can attach. They describe what the program did, not what your messages say.