How to export your chat data from WhatsApp

Own your chat data on WhatsApp

Wang Jiannan

Introduction

More than 2 billion people in over 180 countries use WhatsApp to stay in touch with friends and family, anytime and anywhere. This article provides step-by-step instructions on how to export your chat data from WhatsApp.

Note that WhatsApp only lets you export a copy of your chat data in raw txt format, which makes it not user friendly to look back on valuable memories from previous chats. Good news is that

Remembered⁠

provides an easy way to preserve & reminisce digital memories across major social media platforms in one place. You also own 100% of your personal data on your local drive, not big tech like Meta.

Exporting your chat data is a native functionality WhatsApp offers ONLY on the mobile platform. You can follow along this

help doc from WhatsApp⁠

or continue reading for a more visual guide.

Instructions

Step 1:

Open your WhatsApp mobile app and open an individual or a group chat

Step 2:

Tap on the chat title on the top to see contact info or group info

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Step 3:

Scroll down and select ‘Export Chat’

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Step 4:

You have the option to choose ‘Attach Media’ or ‘Without Media’. It’s preferred to always choose ‘Attach Media’ as you are able to see all the photos and multimedia files in your chats.

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Step 5:

A ZIP archive file will be downloaded to your phone immediately. From there, you can transfer this file to your laptop/PC via email, AirDrop, cloud drives, etc. so you can use Remembered to aggregate & reminisce your precious memories in chats :)

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If you follow along, you should have a copy of chat data with families and friends from WhatsApp to look back on years later. If you are looking for a tool that helps you reminisce these memories easily in a beautiful view, please give

Remembered⁠

a try.

Introduction

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