Is there a cheap (ideally free) way to archive old Apple messages? I have 13GB of messages and would like to reclaim some of that iCloud space. I am currently saving everything, but I could easily get by with the past year. I don’t need instant access to my history, but I would like to have them to reference in the future. Some of my messages are from people who have died. It would be nice to retain that information offline.
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It’s pretty clunky but you can select the message threads individually and print them to PDFs.
There’s GitHub - ReagentX/imessage-exporter: Export iMessage data + run iMessage Diagnostics and Transfer, Print & Backup iPhone Messages - SMS - iMessages | iMazing though I’ve used neither
If you use the Apple Mail app just right click on a folder and select Export Mailbox. The MBOX files created can be imported by many/most email clients.
I have a vague recollection that the messages are in a SQLite database. Which means with the right tools and knowledge (that many have) this could be a way to extract. There are articles on the web about this I think.
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I must be the odd duck (no comments! 
).
I don’t keep messages. I delete them. If I have text I want to save, or a photo from the family, I’ll save those and delete the messages. I’ve never found a reason to save text messages. Saving hundreds of messages just clutters up my workflow. I should add, I rarely use text messaging for any professional work. I much prefer email for work-related communications.
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And email is much easier to archive!
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This worked perfectly! Thank you! It’s interesting that iCloud says that 13+ GBs is taken up by messages, but after downloading the messages, it only comes to 6.5GB. I wonder what’s going on there. Spot checking, it looks like everything is accounted for.
I delete most transactional messages (your order has shipped . . . a debit above your limit . . .) but I keep correspondence. Messages I usually don’t keep are automatically filed by server side rules so it only takes a couple of minutes to review them, when I have time.
You never know when you might need to look up the name of a friend’s grandchild. I just learned one of my friends has #7 due in February. 
I keep this information in my Contacts app or Notes. 
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I treasure my texting history with my wife. I’d at least want screenshots of some of those exchanges that’d have the look of the app, instead of raw text/sqlite archives.
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I would agree if my wife and I exchanged texts of marital or familial intimacy or significance. But alas, our texts are mundane—“My flight just landed.” “What brand of cheese did you say to pick up?” “My meeting is running late…” My wife and I use the phone or FaceTime for the “best things in life.” My daughters, on the other hand, communicate everything in life to each other via text.
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The iMessage exporter tool does a really nice job of recreating your text history as an html file. Only downside is if you have a really long text history with a person, it’s one html file per person so it will take a while to load.
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That works pretty well! I had to install via brew instead of cargo (compile error), but no problem. Most media seemed preserved.
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A friend of mine was too sick with cancer to have many visitors, so our last conversation was about an hour back and forth via text. I knew this was something to save, so I printed it out as a pdf to archive.
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Haha same here! I delete everything. But is good to see that people save some also, that is why is so good to be alive and be able to share with all of you … we are all different and we still try to help each other.
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I only delete transactional messages, e.g. notifications of deliveries, MFA one time codes (Grrrrrrrr), and other time bound notifications.
Everything else I keep forever. I may go back at some point and delete some of the larger media if I start to get close to my 2TB iCloud limit to stretch out the need to upload.
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