TextMint guide

How to export iMessages from your iPhone

By Tim Grootes, Bumblly · Last updated November 14, 2026

An iMessage conversation can run for years. Forwarding a few bubbles is easy, but saving the whole thing is not. This guide covers the options, and shows how one screen recording becomes a single PDF of the conversation.

We make TextMint, the app at the end of this guide. The free ways come first, and for a short chat they may be all you need.

Free

What Apple offers

• Forward: touch and hold a message, tap More, select one or more messages and send them to someone (Apple Support).
• Screenshot: Apple suggests sending a screenshot when you want the bubbles and timestamps as they appear in the conversation (same page).
• Screen recording: from Control Center; the video is saved to Photos (Apple Support).

With a Mac or a PC there is another route. Computer programs such as iMazing make a backup of the iPhone and can print whole conversations from it (iMazing). That needs a computer and a cable or a network connection.

Step by step

One recording, one PDF, with TextMint

For a long conversation, a screen recording is quicker than a hundred screenshots. TextMint accepts recordings of up to 20 minutes.

1. Start a screen recording. Open Control Center and tap the Screen Recording button. Recording starts after a 3-second countdown.
2. Scroll through the conversation. Open the conversation at the first message you need and scroll slowly and steadily to the last one.
3. Stop the recording. Tap the red recording indicator at the top of the screen and stop. The video is saved to Photos.
4. Open it in TextMint. In TextMint, tap Add a conversation, choose Screen recording, then Choose recording and pick the video.
5. Let TextMint go through it. TextMint takes the frames it needs, reads the text and builds the conversation, on your iPhone.
6. Name and export. Tap Options to type the other person's name under Names, then tap Export PDF.

Tips

How to make a recording that reads well

• Scroll at an even speed. Fast flicks are fine, but slower is safer.
• Keep the keyboard closed, and do not switch to other apps while you record.
• Start at the first message you need and end at the last one, in one direction.
• Short on time? Overlapping screenshots work too. See how to turn chat screenshots into one PDF.

Good to know

Group chats, photos and dates

• Group chats. From screens, TextMint knows two sides: your messages on the right and everyone else on the left. In a group chat it cannot tell the other people apart. The Original screens layout keeps the screens as they looked, names included.
• Photos and links. Choose Original screens or Both to keep them in the PDF as they appeared.
• Dates. Where the conversation says "Today", "Yesterday" or a weekday, TextMint works out the date from when the recording was made, and the PDF says so.

TextMint is free to download and to try. Without a purchase, an export holds the first 3 message pages and carries a PREVIEW mark. A full export is a one-time purchase: One Export for one conversation, or TextMint Pro for every conversation. There is no subscription.

Everything happens on your phone. There is no account and your conversations are never uploaded. See the TextMint privacy policy.