How to save all your WhatsApp photos, videos and voice notes to a Mac

First: what is actually on the phone

WhatsApp keeps media in its own storage on the iPhone, separate from the Photos app. Two things decide what you can save:

• Only downloaded media exists. If auto-download is off for a chat, the photos you never tapped were never saved to the phone.
• Cleared media is gone from the phone. If you used WhatsApp's storage tools to delete large files, those are no longer on the device either.

Everything else is there, and it can all come out.

Free option 1: save to your camera roll, then import

WhatsApp has a Save to Photos setting (under Settings, Chats) that copies incoming photos and videos to your photo library from then on. Once they are in Photos, they reach your Mac through iCloud Photos or the Photos app's import. You can also open older photos one by one and save them.

Good for photos and videos going forward. It does nothing for voice notes, it does not reach back through years of history in bulk, and the photos land in your library detached from the conversation they came from.

Free option 2: Export Chat with media

In a chat, tap the name, choose Export Chat and then Attach Media. You get a text file of the conversation and the attachments as separate files, which you can save to Files or AirDrop to your Mac.

It works per chat, and WhatsApp caps how much media an export can carry, so on a long chat you get a recent slice. Voice notes and photos arrive as a pile of files referenced from a text file, which is hard to browse later.

Everything at once, with the messages attached

The only complete source for WhatsApp's media on an iPhone is an encrypted iPhone backup, because that is where iOS includes WhatsApp's data. Chatcove makes that backup on your Mac and reads it, so the whole history is available, not a capped slice.

1. Connect the iPhone to your Mac with a cable and open Chatcove. It makes the encrypted backup; you enter your passcode on the phone once.
2. Browse first. Each chat has its photos, videos and voice notes in place, and media galleries per chat. This is free.
3. Export the chats you want, or all of them, as HTML with media included.
4. Open the export folder. Each chat gets its own folder, named after the chat, with a page you can open in any browser and a media folder next to it holding every photo, video, voice note and document from that chat, each linked from the message it arrived with.

What the files look like

Photos and videos

The original files from the backup, as JPEG, MP4 and so on, at whatever quality WhatsApp stored on the phone. WhatsApp compresses photos when they are sent, so the copy in a chat is usually smaller than the sender's original. That is WhatsApp's doing and no tool can undo it.

Voice notes

The original recordings, as .opus audio files. The exported page plays them in Chrome and Firefox; if Safari or QuickTime will not play one on your Mac, VLC (free) will.

Names and order

Files are named by an internal ID with their real extension, not by date. The date and the sender are on the message that links to each file in the exported page, which is the reason to keep the page and the folder together.

Want it printable?

Export the same chats as PDF as well, and the photos appear in the pages.

What it costs

Backing up and browsing everything is free. Exporting is $9, once, for up to 2 Macs, with no subscription and no account. The free trial includes 3 exports of one chat each, so you can check the media folder for a chat before you pay. Everything runs on your Mac and nothing is uploaded.

Common questions