The HTML export: a conversation anyone can open without your program
An HTML export of a text conversation is the same document the PDF engine prints, saved as a file that opens in any browser with nothing installed, plus a folder beside it holding the photographs. The two travel together or the pictures stop working, which is the one rule this page exists to give you. It is the format to pick when the person you are sending the conversation to should not have to install anything. The route to it is the same as any other export, which how to export text messages from an iPhone to a computer covers from the backup onwards.
What do you actually get?
Two things, and keeping them together is the whole trick: one .html file, and one folder
beside it with the same name plus _files. A conversation saved as Alice - 2026-07-27.html
arrives with Alice - 2026-07-27_files next to it.
The file holds the conversation in order, attributed, with timestamps, and the same integrity section the PDF carries, including the sentence stating how many of the conversation’s messages this document holds and why any are absent. That sentence is the one to read before you send it: a date range or a hidden phrase narrows what went in, and the document says so rather than leaving the gap silent. The folder holds the media: the photographs, the voice messages, the videos and the documents, each copied out and referenced by a relative path.
You can see the shape before installing anything, because the sample exports page publishes a real one, folder and all.
Why are the photos in a separate folder?
Because the alternative is a document whose pictures quietly vanish. An export could point at the photographs where they already live, inside the backup or in the temporary folder the conversion used, and it would look perfect on the machine that made it. Then Windows Disk Cleanup empties that temporary folder, or the backup gets deleted, or the file gets emailed to somebody whose computer never had either, and the conversation opens with a row of broken image icons.
Copying each attachment out and pointing at it relatively is what makes the export survive being moved, zipped, or sent to somebody else. It also sets the one rule you have to follow:
Move the file and the folder together, always. Zip them together, attach the zip rather than the file, and when you put the export on a disk, put both on the disk. An HTML export sent on its own still opens and still reads as a complete conversation, with broken image icons where the photographs were, and no sentence anywhere explaining that the export arrived in halves.
Is the file self-contained or not?
The document is; the export is not, and the difference is exactly the sentence above. It is worth being precise because “self-contained” gets used loosely and the loose version is the one that loses somebody their attachments.
What travels inside the .html file itself:
- The typeface. The bundled Inter face is inlined into the file, so the document looks the same on a machine that has never heard of it.
- The emoji. Every emoji is swapped for bundled vector artwork rather than left to the reader’s own emoji font, which is why the file looks identical on Windows, on a Mac and on a phone instead of showing boxes or a different vendor’s drawings.
- The layout. No stylesheet to fetch, no script to run, no font server to call. Open it on a machine with no internet connection and it renders.
What travels beside it, in the _files folder: all of the media. That is the part that needs
the two to stay together.
Why choose HTML over PDF?
Because of who opens it and what they do next. They come out of the same export screen, so this is a choice rather than a commitment.
| HTML | ||
|---|---|---|
| Opens with | Any browser | Any PDF reader |
| Paging | One continuous document | Paginated, with page numbers a reader can cite |
| Finding a phrase | The browser’s own find, on one continuous document | The reader’s own find, with hits listed and numbered by page |
| Media | In the sibling folder, shown inline | Inside the single file |
| Sending it | File plus folder, so zip it | One file |
| Printing it | Whatever the browser decides | What the document was laid out for |
The short version: PDF for anything that will be filed, printed or cited by page number, HTML for anything that will be read on a screen. Exporting both costs one more click, and the export screen does not make you choose once and for all.
If the document is going to a court or to a lawyer, the paginated one is the one they will ask for, and the best app to print text messages for court covers why the page number matters as much as the words.
Does the photo size option apply to HTML too?
Yes. HEIC photographs are converted and photographs are downscaled to the edge length your chosen photo size implies, before the document is rendered, exactly as for a PDF. A long conversation exported at the largest photo size produces a large folder, and the folder rather than the document is where the weight sits.
Which is also the honest answer to the question of how big an HTML export gets: the same size as its pictures, plus a document that is almost always the smallest part of it.
What breaks an HTML export
- Sending the file without the folder. This is the failure worth mentioning twice, because a mail client attaches files and not folders, so the default behaviour of the tool you send it with is already the wrong one. Zip both first.
- Renaming one and not the other. The links are relative to the folder’s name. Rename the document and the folder keeps working; rename the folder and the pictures stop.
- Saving it again out of the browser. The browser’s own save produces its own idea of a folder, or none, which is how a working export turns into a file with no pictures. Keep the export the program wrote and send that.
- Expecting it to be editable. It is a record. A browser is not a text editor and the document is not meant to be one.
What the format cannot do
- It cannot prove where it came from on its own. The integrity section states the source
and the scope, and the
.sha256file beside the export shows that this document is the one the program wrote, which is a different claim from where the messages came from. One limit of that check is worth knowing here and not elsewhere: it is computed over the document, so it says nothing about the folder beside it. Checking one is how to verify a PDF with SHA256, and the procedure is the same for an HTML file. - It cannot be a spreadsheet. For counting and filtering, the CSV is the format, and exporting iPhone messages with their metadata covers what travels in each.
- It cannot carry a page number, because it has no pages. If somebody is going to cite a specific message, export the PDF as well.
Questions people ask
Can I open an HTML message export on a phone?
Yes, if the file and its folder are both there, which in practice means opening the zip
somewhere that keeps both, not tapping the .html out of a mail attachment list. Browsers on
phones render the document fine; it is the folder that gets lost on the way.
Will an HTML export still open in ten years?
Nobody can promise that about any format, and this page will not. What can be said is the mechanism: the document is plain HTML carrying its own fonts, with the media in the folder beside it, and it calls no server, runs no script and needs no account. So the thing that has to survive is a browser that reads HTML. That is a bet rather than a guarantee, and it is worth calling one.
Does the HTML export include edited or deleted messages?
It carries whatever the export was asked to read, and marks it the way the PDF does, because the two share a renderer. Both switches are set before the export runs rather than per format: edit history, and the Recently Deleted store, which holds a message for the 30 to 40 days Apple documents and nothing older than that.
Is the HTML export the same document as the sample on this site?
Yes in form, and that is the point of publishing it: the sample is a real export rather than a
mockup, which is why it ships with its own _files folder beside it. What differs is only the
content. The conversation in it is invented, so nobody’s real messages are published, and the
sample is in English whatever language you would export in.
Where to go next
- How to export text messages from an iPhone to a computer, the route this file comes out of.
- Exporting messages with photos and attachments, for how the media is handled before it reaches the folder.
- The sample exports, to open a real HTML export in your own browser first.