Alto Index
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Export Messages to Markdown

View as Markdown /messages.md Ask Claude about this page Opens Claude with this page's address

Export iMessage conversations with full context.

What you get

  • One Markdown file per conversation, named after the person or the group
  • A heading per day, each message with who sent it and when, then its reactions, replies and edits
  • Photos, videos and audio copied into an attachments folder and embedded; HEIC photos as JPEG
  • With Contacts connected, people are named from Contacts and linked to their contact files
  • Each file starts with its participants, is_group, message_count and dates

Where the files go

alto-index/messages/Alba Novak.md
alto-index/messages/Coast Trip-47.md
alto-index/messages/attachments/

What you choose

  • Tick the conversations to export; People, Groups, Recent, Popular and Unread help you find them
  • Wikilinks or standard Markdown for pictures and replies, in Options… or Settings › Markdown

Left out

  • Files other than photos, video and audio are named in the message, not copied
  • Media that was never downloaded to your Mac

Free and paid

Your first 200 conversations export and keep syncing free. Then one purchase unlocks Messages: on its own, as one of any three apps, or with all of them. See pricing.

With Claude

/altoindex:messages in the Claude plugin browses a person’s conversations, and the MCP server lets Claude Desktop search them.