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How to print text messages from iPhone without screenshots

By Caner Kaya, Kayabyte · Last updated 16 October 2026

Screenshots are the first thing most people try, and for three or four messages they’re fine. But for a longer conversation they get painful fast: hundreds of images, timestamps that only show if you hold a swipe, contact names instead of numbers, and the worry that you’ve missed a message in between.

The good news is that there are ways to print your texts as a continuous document instead. Here they are, from free to paid.

Why screenshots cause problems

Before choosing a method, it helps to know what you’re trying to avoid:

Option 1: Print from Messages on a Mac (free)

If you have a Mac signed in to the same Apple Account, you can print a conversation as one document.

  1. On the iPhone, turn on Messages in iCloud (Settings, tap your name, iCloud, Messages). For green-bubble SMS texts, also turn on Text Message Forwarding for your Mac in the Messages settings on the iPhone.
  2. On the Mac, open Messages, go to Messages, Settings, iMessage, and tick Enable Messages in iCloud. Wait for it to sync. With a lot of messages this can take hours.
  3. Open the conversation and scroll up to the first message you need. Keep going until it stops loading. The Mac prints only what’s loaded on screen.
  4. Choose File, Print, then PDF, Save as PDF at the bottom left. Print that PDF, or send it.

This gives you a continuous document instead of separate images. Its limits: the full date and time may not show on every message, the other person may appear by name only, photos sometimes don’t print, and very long threads can be slow or stop part way. It also only works if the Mac has the messages, and often a Mac only has recent ones. Our guide How to print iMessages from a Mac goes deeper.

Option 2: Email or share specific messages (free, limited)

For one or two key messages, you can forward them:

  1. Touch and hold a message, tap More.
  2. Select the messages you want, then tap the forward arrow and send them to yourself.

The forwarded copy loses the original date, time and sender, so this is only useful as a quick note, not as a record. Don’t rely on it for anything important.

Option 3: Ask your phone carrier (US, limited)

Some US carriers can give you a record of the texts sent and received on your number, usually the date, time and other number, but rarely the content, and never for iMessages (blue bubbles), which don’t go through the carrier. These records can support your printout by showing that messages were sent, but they won’t replace it. Lawyers sometimes request them formally. Ask your carrier what they keep and for how long.

Option 4: Export from an iPhone backup (most complete)

Your iPhone has the full history. When you back it up to a Mac in Finder, the backup contains all the messages stored on the phone. An export app reads that backup and prints the whole conversation, with every message’s details, in one go.

  1. Back up your iPhone in Finder. Our guide: How to make an iPhone backup on a Mac (and encrypt it).
  2. Open the backup in the export app and choose the conversation.
  3. Pick the dates, or the specific messages, and export.
  4. Check the PDF and print it.

This route avoids the Mac sync problem and works for conversations that go back years.

Where Exhibitly helps

Exhibitly is the Mac app we make for option 4. It reads your iPhone backup (encrypted too, with your password) or your Mac’s Messages, and creates a PDF where every message shows its date, time and sender, with phone number or email, with page numbers, photos inline, and a folder of the original attachments. It also saves an Excel file with one row per message.

You can choose the whole conversation, a date range, or just the important messages with some context around them, and redact private details first. For court, the Evidence Bundle edition adds an exhibit cover page and Bates numbers. Every edition includes a verification page listing the sources read and the SHA-256 fingerprints of the attachments and databases, a SHA256SUMS.txt file with the fingerprint of every exported file (the PDF and Excel file too), and, if you want it, a plain text copy of the messages (“Messages as text.txt”) for searching.

Nothing is uploaded; it all happens on your Mac. Try the free preview first. It has every feature, up to 50 messages per export, with a watermark on the PDF.

If you don’t have a Mac

Exhibitly and the Mac printing route both need a Mac. Without one, you could:

Before you print