How to get messages off an old or broken iPhone

Check a Mac first

If you have a Mac and the conversation shows in Messages there, you do not need the phone. Our Mac app reads it from the Mac, and how to export an iMessage conversation has the steps.

If the phone still turns on

Back it up to a computer while it works. On a Windows PC:

1. Get Apple Devices from the Microsoft Store. Plug your iPhone in, and tap Trust on it if it asks.
2. 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.
3. When the backup is done, download our helper and open it. It finds the backup, you pick the conversation, and only that one comes to us, as text.

Windows may say it protected your PC, because we haven't signed the helper yet: choose More info, then Run anyway. If the backup has a password, the helper asks for it.

The phone has to show the Trust prompt and take the tap. If the screen can do neither, the backup may not start.

On a Mac, our app can read an iPhone backup stored on that Mac. We have no steps of our own for making that backup, and Apple's support pages cover it.

If the phone will not turn on

An older backup still counts. If the phone was ever backed up to a PC with Apple Devices or iTunes, or to a Mac, that backup can be read without the phone. It holds the messages up to the day it was made. If it has a password, you will need it.

What cannot be read

A phone that will not turn on and was never backed up to a computer cannot be read. We do not read iCloud either: we never ask for an Apple ID or its password.

The same conversation is also on the other person's phone. If they can export it, that works as well as your own.