How to export an iMessage conversation
Clark Reads reads an iMessage conversation from a plain text file. This page covers what that file has to contain, which layouts we can read, and what happens when the format is unclear.
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The file is the honest part
Exemple fictif
23:41, and the Last Message of the Night
Start with the night this group worked, because it did work, and it is the reason the rest of this report is not a complaint.
Start from the device that holds the conversation
iMessage history lives on the iPhone, iPad or Mac that received it. Open Messages on that device and open the thread you want read — everything below works from that one conversation.
Get the conversation into a text file
This is the step we cannot do for you: iMessage has no built-in plain-text export, so the file has to be prepared on your side. What we need in the end is simple — one message per line, in the order it was sent, with the sender in front of every line.
Check the shape of the file
Open the file in any text editor. Each message should start with the sender name followed by a colon, for example Alex: are you around? A line that does not start with a name is read as part of the message above it, so a message may run across several lines.
Keep the dates and times if you have them
A full date with a 24-hour clock and a month name with a 12-hour clock are both read. If your file has no dates at all, the conversation is still read in order — the timeline in the report is simply thinner.
Upload the file on the setup page
Choose iMessage as the source, then drag the text file in. We count the messages and show what we found — the senders, how many messages each one sent, and the span of the conversation — before you go on.
What the file has to look like
One message per line: the sender, a colon, then the message itself. Continued lines that do not start with a sender name belong to the message above them, and nothing inside a message is dropped — the whole text is read.
Dates and times are welcome but not required. When they are present, we read the stamp in front of the sender name; when they are missing, the report leans on the order of the conversation instead of exact dates.
One conversation per file. A file that mixes several threads produces senders who never spoke to each other, and we will say so rather than quietly analyze the mixture.
What happens when the file is unclear
When we cannot read the file at all, we stop and tell you — we do not guess and we do not hand you a report built on nothing. The message you get says we could not recognise the format and gives you one thing to try: open the file in a text editor and check that every message starts on its own line with the sender name followed by a colon.
When we can read the file but the senders look unreliable — only one sender found, far more names than one conversation should have, or most lines without a sender in front of them — we ask you to confirm who is who before the report is written.
Long conversations
Nothing is sampled away. The conversation is followed from the first message to the last, so the parts that changed over time — a week where the tone shifted, a question that was never answered — stay in the reading.
How to Export an iMessage Conversation: what people ask
Does iMessage have an export button?+
No. iMessage history lives on the iPhone, iPad or Mac that received it, and macOS has no plain-text export for a whole conversation. The file has to be prepared on your side, one message per line, with the sender in front of every line.
What should the text file look like?+
One message per line: the sender, a colon, then the message itself. Continued lines that do not start with a sender name belong to the message above them, and nothing inside a message is dropped. Dates and times are welcome but not required.
Are you going to add an iMessage exporter?+
It is not part of this build, and we are not going to put a date on it. We also do not recommend a third-party tool: when there is something real to use, it will appear on this page.
What happens if the file format is not recognised?+
We stop and tell you rather than guess. The message says the format was not recognised and gives you one thing to try: open the file in a text editor and check that every message starts on its own line with the sender name followed by a colon.
Can I paste the conversation into a document instead?+
If the messages are there in order, they can be read — but dates copied out of Messages are relative (“Today 09:41”), so the timeline in the report is thinner. Where a timestamp cannot be recovered, the report leans on the order of messages instead of inventing a calendar.
The file is ready. Read it.
Choose iMessage as the source, drag the text file in, and you will see the message count and the senders before you go on. The opening of the report is free to read.
Upload an iMessage text fileWhere to go next
To be honest about the current state: this is a manual step. iMessage does not give you a plain-text export and we do not offer an export tool, so you prepare the text file yourself and Clark Reads reads it.