Message Album
Guides to keeping your messages
Practical, honest guides to saving, exporting, printing and archiving iPhone and Mac conversations, including the free methods and the ones that don't work as well as people claim.
Everything here is written to be useful whether or not you ever buy Message Album. Where a free or built-in method does the job, it is listed first, and where a competing tool is genuinely better for a particular case, it is named.
How to save text messages from an iPhone: every method, honestly compared
Six ways to get text messages off an iPhone and onto a computer, what each one actually preserves, and which to pick depending on whether you need one thread, one message, or twenty years of history.
How to print text messages from an iPhone
Four ways to get a printed copy of a text conversation, including the free Mac method that handles long threads, and what to do when you need the printout to hold up as a record.
How to export an entire iMessage conversation on a Mac
Why the Messages app has no export command, the free methods that work anyway, how to get history that never synced to your Mac, and how to end up with an archive you can still open years from now.
How to save text messages as a PDF
The free Mac method, the iPhone-only workarounds, and the two things a PDF cannot hold. Plus how to get a PDF of a conversation too long to scroll through.
Does iCloud backup save text messages?
Yes, but not in the way most people assume, and there are three situations where it will not help you at all. What iCloud actually stores, and what it does not protect you from.
How to keep your text messages when you switch phones
What transfers automatically, what quietly does not, and the one step to take before you wipe the old phone. Covers iPhone to iPhone and the harder case, iPhone to Android.
How to preserve text messages as a record
Why screenshots are the weakest possible form of a message record, what a complete preservation actually includes, and how checksums let you show an archive has not been altered.
How to save the messages of someone who has died
A practical guide to preserving a conversation with someone you have lost: what to do first, how to reach messages on their phone or account, and how to keep the thread somewhere it cannot quietly disappear.