Home · Guides · updated 2 September 2026

How to export a WhatsApp chat for court

The export is the record. Everything after it — the hash, the certificate, the exhibit — describes this file, so it is worth taking properly the first time and worth not touching afterwards.

Before you start

• Do not delete anything in the conversation, and do not clear media to make room. Whatever is gone at the moment of export is gone from the record.
• Check the phone’s date and time are correct. Timestamps in the export come from the device clock, and a wrong clock produces wrong timestamps in a perfectly genuine export.
• Decide whether you need the attachments. If photographs, voice notes or documents matter at all, export with media. A second export can be taken later, but it will be a different file with a different hash.
• Free up some space, because a long conversation with media can run to hundreds of megabytes.

Android

1. Open WhatsApp and open the conversation you want.
2. Tap the three-dot menu at the top right.
3. Tap More, then Export chat.
4. Choose Include media or Without media.
5. Choose where to send it. Save to Files or Drive rather than sending it through a chat app.

iPhone

1. Open WhatsApp and open the conversation.
2. Tap the contact name or group name at the top of the screen.
3. Scroll to the bottom and tap Export Chat.
4. Choose Attach Media or Without Media.
5. In the share sheet, choose Save to Files.

What you get

• Without media: a single .txt file, one line per message, prefixed with the date, time and sender.
• With media: a .zip containing that same transcript plus the attachment files, with entries in the transcript naming each file.
• Either way the transcript begins with a line recording that messages are end-to-end encrypted, which is written by the application and is one of the structural features a fabricated transcript tends to lose.

The two limits worth knowing

• Exports are size-capped. A long conversation, particularly with media, is truncated from the older end. Open the transcript and check it starts where you expect it to; if it does not, say so rather than letting a reader assume the record is complete.
• Media that is no longer on the device cannot be exported. Attachments cleared, expired from cache or never downloaded come out as media omitted even on a with-media export. See what “media omitted” means.

Getting the file off the phone without changing it

This is where honest records get damaged. A hash is exact, and several ordinary ways of moving a file rewrite it:

• Do not send the export through WhatsApp or another messaging app. It may be recompressed in transit.
• Do not unzip it and re-zip it. The contents survive; the archive is a different file with a different hash.
• Do not open the transcript in an editor and save it. A byte-order mark or a change of line endings alters the hash without altering a word.
• Prefer a cable, or a cloud drive, or email to yourself as an attachment — and where email is used, keep the file inside the .zip.
• Hash it first if you can. The commands are in verifying the hash, and a value recorded at the moment of production is worth more than one computed a fortnight later.

A backup is not an export

The Google Drive or iCloud backup WhatsApp makes is an encrypted image of the whole application, intended to be restored onto a phone. It is not readable, not selective, and not something you can file. Restoring one also overwrites whatever is currently on the handset. For evidence, the in-app export is the tool; the backup is not an alternative to it.

WhatsApp Business and multiple accounts

The Business application exports the same way through the same menus. Where a phone runs two accounts, or a dual-app clone, take care to export from the account that actually holds the conversation and to describe that account in the certificate — the number the account runs on is one of the particulars the Schedule wants.

After the export

1. Copy the file once, to a stable location, and leave the copy alone.
2. Compute its SHA-256 and write the value down with the algorithm named.
3. Note the date and time you took the export, and from which handset.
4. Complete the certificate against that file — see the certificate format.
5. Work from a duplicate for reading and preparation, never from the certified file.

Section63 reads the .txt or .zip in your browser, hashes it before anything else happens to it, and builds the exhibit and the certificate around that value. The file is not uploaded while you look at the result.

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This guide explains procedure and states the law as we understand it. It is not legal advice, and Aarohan Enterprises is not a law firm. Whether a court admits a particular record, and what weight it gives it, is for that court to decide. Have an advocate settle anything you intend to file.