You have complete control over your Facebook and Instagram content. Still, the social media platform can restrict or ban your account in unfortunate situations. Before you lose access to your messages, export your conversations from Facebook and Instagram for offline use.
Unlike WhatsApp, you can’t head to a conversation and export it on your mobile device. You can use your iPhone,top budget Android phone, or the web version to export your messages from Facebook and Instagram. Before we show you the steps, we explain the motives behind exporting messages.
Reasons to download messages from social media apps vary from one person to another. Here are the common scenarios where you might keep a copy of your messages offline on a computer:
Export messages from Facebook
Let’s start with Facebook web and move to mobile apps to complete the download process.
Use Facebook web to export messages
Whether you download your Facebook messages in HTML or JSON format, you may need to convert them to PDF for better compatibility. You can use online tools to complete the conversion.
Use the Facebook mobile apps to export messages
We use Facebook for Android in the screenshots below. The steps may vary for the iPhone or iPad app.
Facebook sends you a notification when your download is ready. For security reasons, you have only four days to download your file.
Export messages from Instagram
Go through the steps below to export your Instagram messages. Since Instagram uses the same Meta account center, the steps to export messages remain almost identical.
Use Instagram web to export messages
Use the Instagram mobile apps to export messages
Some third-party apps and services also let you export messages from Facebook and Instagram. Although they offer PDF export, time stamps, contact info, and more, we advise against using them for security reasons.
Save your priceless memories on Facebook and Instagram
You can also download Facebook conversations if you no longer plan to use the platform or want to take a temporary break. Check our post todeactivate your Facebook account. We hope to see a better and more straightforward implementation of downloading messages from Facebook and Instagram. Both platforms can take some inspiration from WhatsApp.
