Download Messages from iMessage to Mac Desktop

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Download Messages from iMessage to Mac Desktop

A friend shared a ton of photos from our trip via iMessage. (I asked for them to just due a Shared Album on Photos, but they didn't.)

Ordinarily, I'd save them to Photos, but there are so many, and not all of them are photos I want in my Photos Library. I know I can just add them and delete the ones I don't want, but I was hoping to avoid that. I would just like to create a folder on my desktop, download the photos from the message to that folder, and then go through the folder and pick which ones to put in the Photos Library. I would then have all the photos in that folder for potential future use without clogging up the Photos Library.

So, is there a way to download the photos from iMessage to a folder on the Mac? (For what it's worth, I'm using Sonoma 14.3.1.

Thanks.

Posted on Mar 5, 2024 2:12 PM

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Answer 1

muguy

Level 10

91,388 points

Mar 5, 2024 2:24 PM in response to russellraquel

You may be able to drag and drop the photos directly. Otherwise, you’ll need to download first

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Answer 2

Mar 5, 2024 3:13 PM in response to muguy

I tried that without any luck. Not sure why. But I fear you may be correct. The problem is that there are 800 photos, and I'd rather not download them all to Photos.

I may just have to find the time to go through them one-by-one on messages to pick which ones to download. Seems weird we just can't download them as files. But perhaps because they were taken on an iPhone, which uses the HEIC format, which is not very friendly, they don't just function as normal files.

Thanks again.

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Download Messages from iMessage to Mac Desktop

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