Export Facebook Messenger Chats as JSON: Formats and Fixes

1JSON or HTML: which should you choose?

If you are unsure, request JSON for importing and keep an HTML copy for reading. You can create more than one export.

2Export your Messenger chats as JSON

Meta is gradually moving people to Meta Accounts, so you may see Accounts Center or Meta Account settings, and either Export your information or the older label Download your information. The steps are the same in spirit.

1. Open Accounts CenterOn Facebook in a browser, click your profile picture, then Settings and privacy, then Settings, then Accounts Center.
2. Open the export toolClick Your information and permissions, then Export your information, then Create export.
3. Choose the profile and destinationSelect the Facebook profile whose messages you want, then choose Export to device.
4. Select Messages onlyChoose to customise the information and leave only Messages selected. A smaller export is faster and easier to handle.
5. Set the date rangeChoose All time for the full history, or a shorter range.
6. Choose JSON and media qualitySet the format to JSON. Pick a lower media quality to keep the files smaller, or the highest quality if photos and videos matter to you.
7. Start the exportCheck the notification email address, then click Start export. You may be asked for your password.
8. Download within four daysMeta notifies you by email and on Facebook when the export is ready. Download it from Available downloads in the export tool within four days.

Meta says most information is typically ready within a few hours, while optional data logs can take up to 15 days. You do not need data logs for messages.

3What is inside the JSON export

Meta delivers one or more ZIP files. Meta does not document every folder name and they have changed over the years, but recent message exports usually look like this:

• your_facebook_activity/messages/inbox/ holds one folder per conversation, named after the person or group plus a number. Older exports used messages/inbox/ without the first folder.
• Inside each conversation folder are files named message_1.json, message_2.json and so on. Long conversations are split across several files.
• Media you requested sits in subfolders such as photos, audio or videos.
• You may also see folders such as archived_threads, message_requests, filtered_threads or e2ee_cutover.

Each JSON file typically lists the participants, then the messages with the sender’s name, a timestamp in milliseconds and the text content. Reactions, shared links and media references appear as extra fields.

4End-to-end encrypted chats

Personal Messenger chats are increasingly end-to-end encrypted. Meta cannot read those messages, so they may be missing from the Accounts Center export. Messenger has a separate download for encrypted chat history, which Meta says is being introduced gradually and needs secure storage turned on.

1. Open Messenger.com on a computerSign in at Messenger.com and click your profile picture.
2. Find message storageClick Privacy & safety, then End-to-end encrypted chats, then Message storage.
3. Turn on secure storage if neededWithout secure storage, there is no remote copy to download. Set it up with a PIN or another security method Meta offers.
4. Download your stored messagesWhere the option is available to you, use it to download your secure storage data, and keep the file somewhere safe.

5Why emoji and accents look garbled, and the fix

Open a Messenger JSON file in a text editor and you may see é where there should be é, or strange symbols instead of emoji. Your messages are not damaged. It is a long-documented quirk in how Meta writes these files.

Text is normally stored as UTF-8, where a character like é takes two bytes. JSON can write any character as an escape such as é. Meta’s export instead escapes each UTF-8 byte separately, producing é. A normal JSON reader turns those two escapes into two separate characters, Ã and ©. Emoji use four bytes, so they turn into four odd characters.

How the fix works

1. Read the JSON normally, so the escapes become characters.
2. Take each text value and convert its characters back to raw bytes using the Latin-1 encoding, which maps each of those characters to exactly one byte.
3. Decode those bytes as UTF-8. The original letters and emoji come back.

Apply the fix to text fields such as names, message content and titles. Do not save over your original download while experimenting; work on a copy.

6Privacy tips for your export

• Your export contains other people’s private messages as well as yours. Store it on a device you control, ideally with device encryption such as BitLocker on Windows.
• Download it from Meta directly to that device; avoid forwarding it by email.
• Delete the ZIP from your Downloads folder once you have moved it, and delete old exports you no longer need.
• Be careful about uploading the whole archive to online tools. Read what local-first processing means before choosing one.

7Using your JSON export with Memory Clone

Memory Clone, a Windows app currently in alpha, reads Messenger JSON, HTML and ZIP exports directly on your PC and repairs Meta’s text encoding during import, so you do not need to fix emoji or accents yourself. It learns the writing style of each relationship separately. Download it for Windows and read training an AI on Messenger messages for what happens next.