Pulls every SMS and MMS off this phone into one file you can keep, read, or move to another phone. Nothing is uploaded anywhere — the file stays on your device.
Phone older than Android 6 (2015)? Use the
legacy build instead — same app, same features, built for Android 4.4 and up.
Installing it
Tap the download button above.
Chrome will warn you that this kind of file can harm your device. That warning appears for every app not installed from the Play Store. Choose the option to download it anyway.
Open the downloaded file.
Tap it in the download notification, or find it in Files under Downloads.
Allow this one install.
Android will say Chrome (or Files) is not allowed to install unknown apps. Tap Settings, turn on Allow from this source, then press back — the install screen returns.
Tap Install, then Open.
The app is called SMS Import / Export. It has no ads, no account, and no internet permission.
Say yes to the permission prompts.
It asks for SMS, contacts, and call log access on first launch. It needs those to read your messages; denying them leaves the export empty.
Getting your messages out
Tap Export Messages.
It is the first button on the main screen.
Pick where to save it.
Android’s file picker opens. Downloads is the easy choice. The file is named messages-YYYY-MM-DD.zip.
Wait for the count.
A few thousand messages take a minute or two; a large history with photos can take considerably longer. It tells you how many SMS and MMS it exported when it finishes.
Move the file where you want it.
Open Files, long-press the zip, and share it to Drive or email — or plug the phone into a computer by USB and copy it across.
Want a much smaller file? In the app’s Settings, turn off Include binary MMS data. That drops the photos and videos attached to picture messages and keeps the text.
RCS chats. The app has no explicit support for RCS — Android gives apps no documented way to read those. In practice Android stores many RCS messages as MMS, and users report they come through in the MMS export. Treat anything blue-bubble in Google Messages as likely-but-not-guaranteed.
Moving messages onto a phone (rather than off one) is also supported, but Android only lets the default SMS app write to the message database. The app will offer to make itself the default temporarily — switch back to Google Messages when the import finishes.
What is inside the zip
Plain JSON — one record per message, with the sender, timestamp, and body, plus attachment files for MMS. It opens in any text editor and can be read by a script. Nothing proprietary.