How to analyze your iMessage texts
The Messages app has no export for a conversation, so iMessage texts come into WholeThing as screenshots. Scroll through the chat, screenshot as you go with a little overlap, and pick up to 20. WholeThing reads the words on your phone and counts what’s visible: who sent more, who writes longer, the words you share. Times aren’t read.
Is there a way to export iMessages?
Not the way WhatsApp does it. Apple’s guide to Messages on iPhone covers saving, copying and sharing photos and attachments from a conversation, but it describes no way to export the conversation itself as a file. With iCloud, your messages stay up to date on all your Apple devices, which helps when you scroll back, but that isn’t a file you can hand to another app.
So for iMessage (and SMS or RCS texts in the same app), WholeThing uses screenshots. It’s coming soon to iPhone, and the screenshot route is what it calls a quick read.
How a quick read works
- 1In WholeThing, choose Screenshots, then Choose screenshots. The picker shows the screenshots in your photo library; pick up to 20.
- 2The app reads the words off each picture on your phone, with Apple’s own text recognition.
- 3It works out who said what from which side each bubble sits on. In Messages your texts are on the right and theirs on the left. If the pictures don’t make that clear, it asks: “Which side is you?”
- 4Messages that show up in two overlapping screenshots are counted once.
- 5You see a receipt with the number of screenshots and messages, say who the person is to you and what you’re curious about, and the report opens.
It needs about 12 messages, with both of you in them, before it can say anything specific.
How to screenshot a Messages conversation
- Open the conversation and scroll to where you want to start. Tap outside the text field so the keyboard closes and more of the chat fits.
- Take a screenshot: side button and volume up together on an iPhone with Face ID; the Home button and side button on one with a Home button.
- Scroll a bit less than a screen, then take the next. Overlap is fine. WholeThing counts each message once.
- Make sure both of you appear. Screenshots of only your own texts, or only theirs, give it nothing to compare.
- Keep bubbles whole and the text sharp. A bubble cut off at the top or bottom is a message half read.
- Take ordinary screenshots, not Full Page captures, so they save to your photo library.
You don’t need to swipe to show the times next to each text. WholeThing doesn’t read times from screenshots at all: a quick read works from the order of the messages, never from when they were sent.
If WholeThing can’t read them
WholeThing says so, in plain words, and says what to change:
- “We couldn’t read those.” The text wasn’t clear enough to read. Screenshots of the chat itself work best, with sharp text and whole bubbles.
- “That doesn’t look like a conversation.” Only one person’s messages were visible. Add screenshots where both of you appear.
- “There isn’t much to read yet.” Fewer than about 12 messages came through. Add more of the conversation.
Each one comes with a button to pick different screenshots, or to choose a different source.
What a quick read can show
Every card from a quick read is counted from the words in your screenshots and ends with the line “From these screenshots.” If there’s enough to go on, it can show:
- Who sent more of the messages you captured.
- Who writes longer texts, when there are enough on both sides to compare.
- A word you both keep using, the heart of your shared language, when it comes up often enough from each of you.
- What you talk about most, when there’s enough text.
Each finding has its own minimum. A few screenshots may be enough for one card, not all four, and WholeThing drops a finding rather than make a claim the screenshots can’t carry.
What it can’t show
Because a quick read doesn’t use times, nothing about timing can come from it: not who texts first, not reply times, not the week things changed, not the longest silence, not when you talk.
It reads words only, so photos, voice messages and Tapbacks aren’t counted. And it knows nothing beyond the screenshots you picked. What it finds is true of those messages; it isn’t a verdict on the relationship, and it can’t say what anyone meant or felt.
If you also talk on WhatsApp, a full export carries every message with its time, and that’s where the timing findings come from.
Does the other person know you took a screenshot?
Apple’s guides to Messages and to taking screenshots on iPhone describe no screenshot alert of any kind. A screenshot saves to your own photo library, and that’s where WholeThing picks it from.
WholeThing is for a conversation you’re part of: your own texts, on your own phone.
What happens to your screenshots
The pictures never leave your phone. The text is read from them on the device. After that it’s handled like any chat: every number is counted on the phone, and to write the sentences on the cards, the counted facts and short excerpts are sent to a language model with phone numbers, emails and links removed first. The sentences are kept on WholeThing’s server for 30 days, tied to a fingerprint of the screenshots rather than to you. There’s no account to make and no ads. More on where a chat goes.
Questions
- Can I export my iMessages to a file?
- Apple doesn’t describe a way to export a Messages conversation on iPhone. WholeThing reads iMessage through screenshots instead.
- Does it work for green-bubble texts too?
- Yes. It reads the words and which side they’re on, so SMS and RCS texts in Messages work the same way as iMessages.
- How many screenshots can I pick?
- Up to 20 per read, with about 12 messages from the two of you as the minimum.
- Can it work out reply times from the timestamps?
- No. A quick read doesn’t use times, even ones visible in the picture. Reply times need a full WhatsApp export.
- Does it read group chats?
- No. WholeThing reads conversations between two people.