Guides: getting your text messages off your iPhone
Plain, step-by-step guides for saving, printing and presenting iPhone text messages, whether they’re for a lawyer, a court, or a keepsake. Each guide starts with what you can do for free with your iPhone and Mac, and only then explains where Exhibitly, the Mac app we make, can help.
These guides are practical help, not legal advice. Court rules differ between countries, states and individual courts. Check your court’s rules, or ask a lawyer, legal aid service or your court’s self-help centre.
Getting your messages out
- How to make an iPhone backup on a Mac (and encrypt it): the most complete copy of your messages, step by step, and what to do if you’ve forgotten the backup password.
- How to export an iMessage conversation to PDF: screenshots, printing from a Mac, and exporting from a backup.
- How to print iMessages from a Mac: syncing with Messages in iCloud, printing to PDF, and fixing missing messages and photos.
- How to print text messages from iPhone without screenshots: continuous printouts instead of hundreds of images.
- How to export iPhone messages to Excel: one row per message, for sorting, searching and timelines.
Texts for court
- How to print text messages from iPhone for court: three ways to do it, and what the printout should show.
- Export text messages to PDF for court: what the PDF should show: a 10-point checklist for dates, numbers, context, page numbers and attachments.
- Text messages as evidence in family court: a practical checklist: keeping messages safe, choosing what to include, and being ready to explain them.
- Text messages in child custody cases: which messages tend to matter, how much to include, and what to avoid.
- Custody evidence binder: what to include: the sections, and how to build a timeline of events.
Keepsakes
- How to make a memory book from text messages: keeping a loved one’s messages safe, and turning them into a printed book.
By Caner Kaya, Kayabyte. Questions or corrections: support@kayabyte.dev.