How to export a WhatsApp chat on iPhone

Updated September 30, 2026

Open the chat in WhatsApp on your iPhone, tap the person’s name at the top, scroll down and tap Export Chat, then choose Without Media. WhatsApp packs the chat into a ZIP file of plain text and opens the share sheet, so you can save it to Files or send it straight to another app.

The steps at a glance

1Open WhatsApp on your iPhone and open the chat you want: one person, not a group.
2Tap the person’s name at the top of the chat.
3Scroll down and tap Export Chat.
4Choose Without Media.
5Pick where the file goes in the share sheet: Save to Files to keep it, or WholeThing once it’s out.

That’s the whole WhatsApp side, and it matches the steps on WhatsApp’s own help page for iPhone. The rest of this guide covers why each choice matters, what ends up in the file, and what to do when something doesn’t work.

Do it on your phone, not a computer

Your iPhone is where your WhatsApp history lives. WhatsApp on a Mac, a PC or in a browser is a linked device: when you link it, your phone sends it a copy of your most recent messages, not all of them. WhatsApp’s help page on linked devices says it plainly: not all messages and chats are synced, and to see or search your full history, check your phone.

That matters more than it sounds, because an export can only hold what the device has. In WholeThing’s own testing, the same chat exported from a Mac covered 92 days. Exported from the phone it belonged to, it covered nearly three years.

A short file still looks like a perfectly normal export, so nothing warns you that most of the story is missing. Why old messages go missing on a computer explains the details.

Why Without Media

WhatsApp asks whether to attach media or not. For reading a conversation, Without Media is the one to pick:

Every message is still there, with its date, time and sender.
Photos and voice notes still show up. In their place the file keeps a line such as “image omitted” or “audio omitted”, so it’s still clear that one was sent, and by whom.
It’s small. With media, the ZIP carries every photo and video as well, and it can run to hundreds of megabytes. Without, it’s mostly text, so it’s quick to save, send and read.

WholeThing only reads the text. If you already exported with media, the file still works. It’s just much bigger than it needs to be.

What’s in the file, and what isn’t

WhatsApp’s help page lists a few things worth knowing about an iPhone export:

It arrives as a ZIP file with the chat inside as text.
View once messages aren’t exported.
It’s a text file, not a backup, so it can’t be imported back into WhatsApp.

Anything that’s no longer in the chat on your phone can’t be in the export either, such as messages cleared by a disappearing-messages timer.

One more: if someone in the chat has turned on Restricted chat (it used to be called Advanced chat privacy), nobody in that chat can export it. In a one-to-one chat either of you can switch it on. That’s their call to make, and there’s no way around it.

WholeThing is for a chat you’re part of. It reads the file you exported from your own phone, and nothing else.

Getting the file into WholeThing

WholeThing is coming soon to iPhone. When it’s out, there are two ways to bring the export in:

Straight from the share sheet. After Without Media, pick WholeThing in the share sheet. A small card says “Open WholeThing to read it.” Open the app and it picks the file up by itself. If WholeThing isn’t in the row of apps, scroll to the end of the row and tap More.
From Files. Save the export to Files first. In WholeThing, choose A whole WhatsApp chat, then “I already have the file”, and pick the .zip (or a .txt, if that’s what you have).

It’s one chat at a time. If you share a second file before opening the app, the newer one is the one it reads. The app’s own export screen shows these same steps, with an Open WhatsApp button that takes you there.

Before anything is counted, WholeThing shows a receipt: how many messages it found, the two names and the months the chat covers. If the dates start later than you expected, the file probably came from a computer, or the older messages aren’t on this phone. If the other person isn’t saved in your contacts, the file may carry their number instead of a name; the app shows “Unknown number”, and phone numbers never appear in your report or shares.

From there, every number is counted on your phone. To write the sentences on the cards, the counted facts and short excerpts are sent to a language model with your two names, phone numbers, emails and links removed first. Here’s exactly where a chat goes.

Is your chat long enough?

WholeThing reads conversations between two people, and it needs enough of one to count anything honestly. It turns a file away if:

it has fewer than about 200 messages,
less than two weeks passes between the first message and the last,
either of you sent fewer than 40 messages, or
more than two people wrote in it (a group chat).

Refusing a thin chat is on purpose: padding it with weak findings would be worse than saying so. Longer chats have more to find. The week it changed is only looked for in a chat that spans at least 12 weeks, and reply times are compared period by period, so a chat with years in it gives them the most to work with.

Not on WhatsApp? Screenshots

If the conversation lives somewhere else, screenshots are the other way in. They only show what’s on screen and carry no times, so a quick read stays with what’s visible: who wrote more, who writes longer, the words you both use. Who texts first, reply times, silences and turning points need the timestamps that only an export has.

There’s a guide for each: Instagram DMs, iMessage, Snapchat and Hinge.

Questions

I can’t find Export Chat. Where is it?: Open the chat itself, tap the name at the very top, then scroll down the page that opens. If it isn’t there, the chat may have Restricted chat turned on, which blocks exporting for everyone in it.
Is there a limit on how many messages WhatsApp exports?: WhatsApp’s help page for iPhone doesn’t mention one. If the receipt in WholeThing starts later than you expect, check whether the older messages are still in the chat on your phone.
Can I export from WhatsApp on my Mac or PC instead?: You’d only get what was synced to the computer, which is the recent part of the chat. Do it on your phone.
WholeThing says the file isn’t a chat export. Why?: It reads the file WhatsApp makes, as it comes. If the file was edited, converted or re-saved in another format, export the chat again and send that file.
Can I export a group chat?: WhatsApp can, but WholeThing reads conversations between two people and turns group chats away.
Is WholeThing out yet?: Not yet. It’s coming soon to iPhone (iOS 17 or later). The WhatsApp steps above work today, so the file is ready when the app is.