Getting SMS and MMS off a phone as a file you can keep

Android, the direct route

SMS Backup and Restore, by SyncTech, is the app almost everyone ends up using, and it is free for what you need.

1. Install it and open it. Choose Set up a backup.
2. Select Messages. Call logs are optional and make the file bigger.
3. Choose where the backup goes. Local storage on the phone is fine, and it also offers Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive and email.
4. Tap Back Up Now and wait. A few years of messages with pictures can take several minutes.
5. Move the resulting file off the phone, because a backup that only exists on the device it backs up is not a backup.

The app will ask for permission to be your default SMS app during a restore. For a backup it does not need that, and you can decline anything that is not needed for the job you are doing.

What you actually get

One XML file. Not a folder, not a document, one file, and on a long history it can be hundreds of megabytes, because every MMS picture is encoded as text and stored inline.

That inline encoding is why opening it goes badly. It is technically a text file, so people double click it and their machine tries to load the whole thing into a text editor and freezes. It is also usually written as one enormous line, so even editors that survive the size show you a single unreadable row.

Inside, each message carries the number, the direction, the date as a millisecond timestamp, and the body. The contact name is included when the app could match the number to your contacts, and is missing when it could not. Restoring it to another Android phone works well, which is what the format was designed for. Reading it as a human was never the point.

RCS is a separate thing, and it may not be in there

If your conversations in Google Messages show read receipts, typing indicators and full-size images, those are RCS chats rather than plain SMS. They are stored differently, and third-party backup apps have historically not been able to include them.

Do not assume either way. After you run a backup, check whether a recent RCS conversation appears in the output. If it does not, the routes left to you are the same ones iPhone owners have: screenshots, or a screen recording, or Google Messages' own backup, which restores to a phone rather than producing a file you can read.

iPhone, and why there is no easy answer

Apple has never put an export in Messages. Every guide claiming otherwise is describing one of these four things.

• A Mac. If your Messages sync to a Mac, you can open the conversation there and print it to PDF. This is the cleanest free route by a distance. It requires a Mac and requires that the conversation has actually synced, which for old threads it often has not.
• A desktop tool that reads your backup. Several paid applications take a computer backup of the iPhone and export conversations to PDF or CSV. They work, they cost money, and you are handing a full phone backup to a third party, so read who you are trusting before you install one.
• A screen recording. Start a recording, scroll the conversation slowly from the top, stop. Faster than screenshots, misses nothing, and leaves you with a video rather than a document.
• Screenshots. The default, the worst, and sometimes the only option available at eleven at night.

If it has to be screenshots, do them properly

Screenshots are weak evidence of a conversation because a set of images cannot show what was between them. You can make them considerably less weak with three habits.

• Overlap them. End each screenshot with a message that also appears at the top of the next one, so the sequence is provably continuous.
• Capture the date separators. Scroll so the grey date line is visible rather than screenshotting a run of bare bubbles that could be from any day.
• Do not crop. A cropped screenshot invites the question of what was cropped out, and there is no good answer to it afterwards.

Also check what the conversation is titled. If the other person is not saved in your contacts, the header shows the number, which is more useful than a nickname you gave them.

Can you get your texts from your phone company?

Usually not the content, and it varies enormously by carrier and by country.

What carriers typically keep and can produce is a record of the message: the numbers, the direction, the date and the time. The text itself is generally not retained in a form they will hand to a customer, and where it exists at all it is usually only obtainable through a legal process rather than a phone call to support.

If it matters, call your carrier and ask what they retain, for how long, and what they will release to the account holder. Do it early, because retention windows are measured in months and they do not pause while you decide.

Reading the file without paying anyone

For Android, a free option exists: several browser-based viewers will open an SMS Backup and Restore XML and let you read the conversation. If you only want to look at it, start there.

The catch for anything beyond looking is that an XML file is not a document. It does not paginate, it will not print sensibly, you cannot hand it to a lawyer or an insurer, and the MMS pictures are encoded as text rather than sitting anywhere you can see them. If you have the patience and some technical confidence, a short script can convert it. Most people asking this question do not want to write a script at eleven at night.

Questions, answered.