How to Save Your iMessage Chat History When Someone Dies | Lifehacker


After shedding a liked one, you could need to maintain onto your previous textual content message conversations, but it surely’s not simple on iMessage. If you need to backup your chat historical past, step one is to alter how lengthy your iMessage texts are being saved. Go to Settings > Messages > Keep Messages and choose Forever if you don’t need your older texts to routinely delete.

A screenshot showing options to save iMessage chats for up to 30 days, 1 year, and forever.


Credit: Pranay Parab

You additionally need to defend your iMessage texts within the inevitable occasion you find yourself altering to a brand new machine, so allow iCloud sync. Go to Settings > [YOUR NAME] > iCloud > Show All > Messages in iCloud and allow Use on this iPhone. This will make sure that all of your iMessages transfer with you to your new Apple gadgets.

A screenshot of iPhone's Messages in Cloud feature.


Credit: Pranay Parab

And lastly, to be protected, you should use a Mac for an entire backup of your iMessages. On your Mac, open the Messages app, go to the right chat, and scroll all the way in which to the highest. This takes some time, however it would allow you to return to your first dialog (looking for previous messages would possibly assist deliver you to the highest). When that is achieved, choose File > Print or press Command+P to avoid wasting all the chat as a PDF. And in the event you discover that course of too cumbersome, you may strive third-party apps to easily issues. I beforehand coated iMessage exporter, which is a free command line instrument that allows you to backup your entire chats rapidly. 

A screenshot of iMessage's print window on a Mac.


Credit: Pranay Parab

If all else fails, you may take screenshots of your most essential conversations, after all. It’s clearly probably the most crude technique to get the job achieved, but it surely works. In case you do not have a Mac, you may simply scroll by means of your iMessage chat in your iPhone and maintain taking screenshots as you go. There are some ways to take lengthy screenshots in your iPhone and can sew all of those photos into one file, do you have to need to protect your chat that means.