How to export WhatsApp chats from an iPhone to a Mac

Disclosure up front: we make Chatcove, which is the third method below. We have put the free method first because for a single conversation it is genuinely the better choice, and you should not pay anyone for something your phone already does.

First, why this is harder than it should be

WhatsApp keeps your history in a database called ChatStorage.sqlite inside its own app container on the iPhone. iOS does not let you browse that. The only supported way to reach it is an encrypted iPhone backup, because WhatsApp's data is only included when backup encryption is switched on.

That single fact explains why every tool in this category, ours included, starts by asking you to make an encrypted backup. Anything promising to skip that step is either using iCloud credentials or is not telling you the whole story.

Method 1: WhatsApp's built-in export. Free.

1. Open the conversation you want on your iPhone.
2. Tap the contact or group name at the top.
3. Scroll down and tap Export Chat.
4. Choose Without Media or Attach Media.
5. Send it to yourself by email, or save it to Files or iCloud Drive.

You get a .txt file of the conversation, and if you chose media, a folder of attachments alongside it.

What it leaves out

• One conversation at a time. There is no way to export everything.
• Media is capped by the size of the export, so a years-long chat gets truncated to a recent slice. WhatsApp warns you when you pick Attach Media.
• The output is plain text. No layout, no bubbles, no PDF, and media sits in a separate folder rather than in the conversation.

Method 2: do it yourself from an encrypted backup

If you are comfortable on a command line, you can do the whole thing with open-source tools. Broadly: use libimobiledevice to drive an encrypted backup, decrypt it, pull ChatStorage.sqlite out, and query it.

It works, and it costs nothing but time. What people underestimate is that the SQLite query is the easy part. The work is in driving the backup and handling the on-device passcode prompt, mapping thousands of files in the media directory back onto the right messages, joining the group and contact tables so names appear instead of phone numbers, and then building something to actually read the result.

Method 3: a desktop app that does it for you

This is the category iMazing, Decipher, Backuptrans, Wondershare, Tenorshare and our own Chatcove sit in. They all do roughly the same thing: drive the encrypted backup, read the database, and give you a readable, exportable version of your history.

How Chatcove does it, since that is the one we can describe accurately:

1. Connect your iPhone to your Mac with a cable and unlock it.
2. Chatcove makes the encrypted backup. It switches encryption on, sets and remembers a strong password for you, and runs the backup. You tap your passcode on the phone once. How long this takes depends on how much is on the phone.
3. Read everything. Every conversation, with photos, videos and voice notes in place, searchable across your whole history. This part is free and unlimited.
4. Export what you want to HTML, PDF, TXT or CSV, with the media included. This is the part that costs $9, once, for up to 2 Macs.

Everything runs on your Mac. There is no account and no upload, and the licence check is an offline signature, so it works with the network disconnected.

Which format should you export to?

• HTML is the best default. It keeps the conversation layout with media inline, opens in any browser, and will still open in ten years.
• PDF is for when it needs to be printed, filed or handed to someone, including for legal purposes.
• TXT is the smallest and most portable, and drops everything but the words.
• CSV is for when you want to analyse the messages in a spreadsheet rather than read them.

Before you switch phones

The moment people usually discover all of this is the week they are moving to a new phone, which is the worst time to learn it. If that is you: do the backup before you wipe or trade in the old device. WhatsApp's own chat transfer moves your history to the new phone, but it does not leave you a copy you can read on a computer, and it does not help at all if the old phone is already gone.

Common questions