Best Text Message Export Apps in 2026

Five apps people actually use to get messages off an iPhone, how each works, what you need to use it, and which one fits the situation you are in. We make one of them, and we have tried to be straight about where it is the wrong choice.

iMazing

Mac and Windows. Paid; check the current price on the maker's site.

A well-known desktop tool. It reads an iPhone backup on your computer and exports conversations as documents, with the timestamps the phone stored. It also does a great deal besides messages.

If you have a computer and the backup is not encrypted with a password you have forgotten, this is the strongest option on this page for completeness.

Decipher TextMessage

Mac and Windows. Paid; check the current price on the maker's site.

More focused on messages than a general phone manager, which makes it quicker to understand if exporting a thread is the only thing you came for. It also reads a backup on your computer.

Same prerequisites: a computer, a cable, disk space for a backup, and the encryption password if one was set.

AnyTrans and Dr.Fone

Mac and Windows. Paid; check the current price on the maker's site.

Both are broad phone-management suites with message export as one feature among many. Useful if you also want to move photos, music and contacts around. Check whether you are buying a year or a lasting licence before you pay.

TextProof

iPhone only. One payment, no subscription. First 20 messages of every conversation free.

Ours. It works on the phone itself, with no computer, no cable, no backup password and nothing uploaded, and it has three ways in. On iOS 26.4 or later, Import from Messages brings a chat in from Apple's Messages app through a free Shortcut, with the exact time on every message. For WhatsApp, it reads WhatsApp's own Export chat file. For anything else, you screen-record yourself scrolling the conversation and it reads the recording. Each way ends in a timestamped PDF, CSV or text file.

From a recording, it marks the places where it may have scrolled past content, rather than closing the gaps silently, and you check and correct every message before exporting.

Where each one wins

• The whole phone's history, and you have a computer — a desktop backup tool such as iMazing or Decipher. Reading the backup beats reading the screen, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
• You only have your phone — TextProof. The desktop tools are not an option without a Mac or PC. On iOS 26.4 or later, Import from Messages gives you exact times without one.
• You have forgotten the backup encryption password — TextProof. This stops more people than anything else on this page.
• The messages are in WhatsApp — WhatsApp's own Export Chat, which TextProof turns into a PDF. Some desktop tools read WhatsApp too, so check before you buy.
• You want to move photos and contacts too — AnyTrans or Dr.Fone.
• You need one short exchange to show a friend — none of these. Screenshots are fine.

Things worth checking before you pay

• Subscription or one payment. Several of these renew annually. If you need this once, for one dispute, that matters.
• Does the output show dates? A transcript with no timestamps is much less use to anyone reading it afterwards.
• Does it tell you what it missed? An export that silently drops content is worse than one that admits a gap.
• Where do the messages go? Some tools upload for processing. If the conversation is sensitive, read the privacy policy rather than the landing page.

If this is for something formal

Whether a document is accepted in a dispute, a tribunal or a court is for the people running that process to decide, not the app that produced it. What consistently helps is the same whichever tool you pick: the whole thread rather than a convenient extract, visible dates, and no silent gaps.

For the underlying methods rather than the products, see how to extract text messages from an iPhone. For the straightforward PDF route, exporting iPhone messages to PDF. And if this is heading to a solicitor, saving text messages for court goes through what tends to get asked for.