Chats that span years can hold tens of thousands of messages. Here's what to expect and how to keep everything.
WhatsApp's export limits
WhatsApp caps exports: its help pages have mentioned limits of about 40,000 messages without media and about 10,000 with media, keeping the most recent ones. If your chat is longer, the oldest messages may be missing from the export.
How to get as much as possible
- Export without media first. It reaches furthest back in time.
- Export again with media if you need recent photos.
- Check the first date in the file. ChatKeep shows the date range as soon as you load it.
Making a PDF from a huge chat
ChatKeep reads the whole file on your device in seconds (we tested 60,000 messages) and builds the PDF in steps, so the page doesn't freeze. A chat this long becomes thousands of pages. On older phones, close other apps first, or use a computer.
Keep the originals
Store the export .txt/.zip alongside the PDF. It's the source if you ever need to rebuild the PDF or prove where it came from.