How to Export a WhatsApp Chat on iPhone

Export the chat, step by step

1. Open WhatsApp and go to the conversation you want to save.
2. Tap the contact or group name at the top of the screen to open the chat details page.
3. Scroll all the way down and tap Export Chat.
4. WhatsApp asks whether to include media. Choose Attach Media to include photos, videos and voice notes, or Without Media for a smaller, text-only file.
5. The iOS share sheet opens. Send the file to yourself — Save to Files, AirDrop to your Mac, or email it to your own address all work.

That's it. With media you get a .zip archive; without media you get a plain .txt file named something like _chat.txt. The file only exists once you choose a destination — cancel out of the share sheet and WhatsApp discards it, so you'd need to export again.

.zip or .txt — which one do you actually need?

When in doubt, start with Without Media — it captures roughly 40,000 messages and takes seconds — then export again with media only if you need the pictures too.

With media or without — which should you pick?

Without Media is instant and tiny (a multi-year chat is usually under 5 MB), but photos appear only as a placeholder line — <image omitted> in English, translated if your phone's language is set to something else (see the table below).

Attach Media gives you the complete conversation, but WhatsApp on iPhone caps the export at roughly the 10,000 most recent messages with media (about 40,000 without). For very long chats, the file can reach hundreds of megabytes and take a while to prepare — keep WhatsApp open in the foreground while it works.

If you want the full history and the pictures, a practical trick is to export twice: once without media for the complete text, once with media for the recent, richer part.

The .txt header line, decoded by region

Open the raw file and the first thing you'll notice is that the timestamp format depends on the phone that created it — the region and language settings, not the app version:

The media placeholder is translated along with everything else. Depending on WhatsApp's display language, an omitted attachment can read as any of these:

Exact wording can shift slightly between WhatsApp versions. ChatViewer's parser handles the date orders, 12- and 24-hour clocks, and the common placeholder translations automatically, so mixed-region exports don't need any manual fixing.

Can’t find the Export Chat button?

• Companies can disable it. If the chat is with a business account, or you're in a region where WhatsApp has restricted exporting, the option may be missing.
• Check the bottom of the details page. Export Chat sits below Media, Starred Messages and the mute settings — it's easy to scroll past.
• Update WhatsApp. On very old versions the flow was different; current versions all use the chat details page.

How to read the exported file

The export is designed for machines, not people — the .txt is a wall of timestamps and the media files sit loose in the zip. To read it like a normal conversation, open the file in ChatViewer: drop in the .zip or .txt and you get the familiar bubble view with photos and voice notes inline, full-text search, and chat statistics. Everything runs in your browser — the file is never uploaded to any server. From there, Export PDF gives you a free copy (first 500 messages, small watermark), an Unlimited PDF for $9 (every message, embedded photos, no watermark), or — for legal use — a Court-ready PDF for $19 with Bates stamps and a SHA-256 integrity hash.