How to export an iMessage conversation

These are the two ways we know work, and both use our own tools. They end with your conversation on read receipts, where it is set as the pages of a book or a PDF. They do not leave a loose file on your desktop.

On a Mac

1. Download Read Receipts for Mac, open the download, and drag the app to Applications.
2. Open it. It asks to read Messages: in System Settings, open Full Disk Access and turn on Read Receipts.
3. Pick your conversation and make the book in the app. Or choose Make It on readreceipts.lol and it carries on in your browser.

The app reads Messages on that Mac, so the conversation has to show there. It can also read an iPhone backup stored on the Mac. Before you pick a conversation, it shows only names, how many messages there are and the dates they span.

The download is in the iMessage steps on our start page. Open that page on the Mac.

On a Windows PC

1. Get Apple Devices from the Microsoft Store. Plug your iPhone in, and tap Trust on it if it asks. In Apple Devices, choose Back up all of the data on your iPhone to this computer, then Back Up Now. The first one can take an hour.
2. When the backup is done, download our helper. If the browser says it isn't commonly downloaded, keep it.
3. Open it. Windows may say it protected your PC, because we haven't signed the helper yet: choose More info, then Run anyway. It finds the backup, you pick the conversation, and only that one comes to us, as text.

If the backup has a password, the helper asks for it. Only the one conversation you pick is sent, as text, with no photos. Nothing else in the backup leaves the PC.

The helper is in the iMessage steps on our start page too. Open that page on the PC.

With no computer

Screenshots work for a short stretch of any conversation: up to 20 of them. They are read by Claude, Anthropic's model, and only if you tick the box that says so. Screenshots rarely show every date.