Exporting a WhatsApp chat with media on Android
Open the chat, tap the ⋮ in the top right, then More → Export chat → Include media. Android then throws you into the share sheet rather than saving anywhere obvious — choose Save to Drive or Files, not a messaging app, or the zip will vanish into a conversation you have to go fishing in.
The path, tap by tap
- Open the conversationThe chat itself, not the chat list. The menu is different from each.
- ⋮ (top right) → MoreMore is the last item and it is easy to read past. Export is not in the first menu on any recent Android build — this is the single most common reason people conclude the feature has been removed.
- Export chatIf it is not there, someone has switched on Advanced Chat Privacy for this conversation. That has its own page, because the fix involves the other person.
- Include mediaChoose this one. Without media gives you a bare .txt where every photo is the words
<Media omitted>— fine for searching, useless for a book. The trade is the message cap: 10,000 with media against 40,000 without. - Wait — properlyA big chat can take several minutes to zip and the progress notification is easy to miss. Leave WhatsApp in the foreground. Backgrounding it mid-export is how you end up with a truncated file on aggressive battery-saver builds.
- Send it somewhere you can findSave to Drive, Files, or email it to yourself. Avoid sending it into another WhatsApp chat: large zips get compressed or rejected, and you will be hunting for it later.
What you actually get
A .zip, not a .txt
Inside: the transcript, named after the conversation — WhatsApp Chat with Amara.txt — plus every attachment as a separate file. Opening it is covered in reading the chat file.
Photos and stickers
As real image files, at whatever resolution WhatsApp compressed them to when they were sent. Nothing here can recover more detail than that — the original never left the sender’s phone at full size.
Voice notes as .opus
Playable, but a format Windows will not preview without help. Their durations are in the file, which is what lets a printed book show a real waveform rather than a QR code — the difference is spelled out in voice notes: QR code or printed?
Short videos, sometimes
Long ones are often skipped to keep the archive under the share limit, leaving the line and losing the file. A book can only ever print a still frame from a video anyway.
With media or without: pick deliberately
| Include media | Without media | |
|---|---|---|
| File you get | .zip | .txt |
| Message cap | 10,000 | 40,000 |
| Photos in your book | Yes, typeset onto the page | No — every one becomes a placeholder |
| Voice notes | Yes, with real durations | A line saying one was sent |
| Typical size | Tens of megabytes to a gigabyte | A few megabytes at most |
| Good for | A book, a gift, an archive | Searching text, reaching further back in time |
You are allowed both. Export twice — one of each — and keep them side by side. It costs ten minutes and it is the standard advice on getting round the 40,000-message cap.
Questions people actually ask
Where does the exported file go on Android?
Nowhere by default. Android hands the finished zip to the share sheet and you choose the destination — Google Drive, Files, Gmail, or another app. If you dismissed the share sheet, the export is gone and you have to run it again.
Why does my export keep failing on a long chat?
Usually battery optimisation suspending WhatsApp while it works. Exempt WhatsApp temporarily, keep it in the foreground, and try again. Very large media archives can also exceed what the receiving app will accept — save to Drive or Files rather than emailing.
Can I export from WhatsApp Web on my computer?
No. Export chat is a phone-only feature on both Android and iPhone. The web and desktop clients have never offered it.
Is the export different on Android and iPhone?
Slightly. Android names the transcript after the conversation and separates the timestamp from the sender with a dash; iPhone calls it _chat.txt and wraps the timestamp in square brackets. Anything that reads these files properly handles both.
Does exporting delete anything or change my chat?
No. It writes a copy. Your conversation, your backups and your media are untouched.
Got the zip? See it as a book.
Open the studio — freeThis is one of the guides — or see everything we’ve written.