How to save an entire iMessage chat to my computer

zb223 wrote:

I was wondering how I can save entire iMessage threads (some over a year of texts) to my computer?

Can this be done without a third party app?

I'd love to be able to save it to a pdf or something like that. Or even if it's just an image.

Thanks!

Syncing to a "New" Computer or replacing a "crashed" Hard Drive link provides 3rd party apps.

I don't know of any easy way to do it without a third-party app. I use PhoneView (Mac) but I've seen TouchCopy (Mac or Windows) also recommended.

You can take screenshots of the message conversation and transfer the resultant pictures to your computer. However, if it's a long conversation, that's going to take a while. If your computer is a Mac and you've been signed into iMessages with the same Apple ID on the computer as on the phone, and you have the conversation there, you can save it to a document from the Messages application.

No, you can't import it to Message on the Mac. You would have to have been using it since the conversation started. I've used this method when I've accidentally deleted a conversation from the phone and wanted a copy of it.

Honestly, the $30 I spent on PhoneView five or six years ago was money well spent. I made a mistake (yes, it was mine, not a bug) when switching to a new phone a couple of months ago and didn't have any of the ringtones I'd created myself. I was able to easily copy them from my old phone to my new computer using PhoneView. From there, it was a simple matter to sync them to the new phone using iTunes.