how-to-export.md

How to export chats

Whatsapp

Follow the official docs here or TLDR:

1. Open the chat to be exported
2. Tap More Options > More > Export Chat
3. Choose Without Media

Telegram

You can find the official release blog for the chat export feature here.

TLDR, on the telegram desktop app:

1. Goto Settings > Advanced > Export
2. Uncheck Account Information and Contacts List (Both not required)
3. Under Chat export settings select the appropriate options according to your preference
4. Uncheck all options under Media export settings and Other (Not required)
5. Set the location, and select format as Machine-readable JSON

Signal

Signal does not provide any "default" way to export chats to plain text. So you can use this tool by @carderne, and follow the steps given in it's README to export all the chats. You should have signal-desktop installed for the tool to work.

TLDR:

1. Clone the tool from the link given above.
2. Install the dependencies (namely, sqlcipher and openssl)
3. Go to the directory of the cloned repository
4. Run ./sigexport.py outputdir to export the chats

Note: The Tool exports the chats in both HTML and Markdown. Make sure to use the Markdown files.