Print Android text messages for court or a lawyer
Android phones have no "print conversation" button either. The free SMS Backup & Restore app saves all your texts to one XML file, and this page turns any conversation in that file into a clean PDF with every date, time and sender.
Why not screenshots?
- Screenshots often leave out dates and show contact names instead of phone numbers.
- A long conversation becomes hundreds of images that are easy to miss or put out of order.
- The XML file itself is complete, but it isn't readable: opened in a browser it's a wall of codes.
Step 1: back up your texts with SMS Backup & Restore
- On the Android phone, install SMS Backup & Restore by SyncTech from Google Play. It's free.
- Open it, tap Back up, and choose Messages (you can leave call logs off; they go into a separate file).
- Keep MMS media included if you want sent photos to appear in the PDF.
- Choose where to save it: Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, or the phone. Then tap Back up now.
Step 2: get the file onto your computer
- Cloud drive: open Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive on the computer and download the file.
- USB cable: plug the phone in, choose "File transfer" on the phone, and copy the file from the SMSBackupRestore folder.
The file is named like sms-20261030120000.xml. If you turned on compression it ends in
.xml.zip; you can choose that too. If you set a backup password, unzip it first (Windows: 7-Zip;
Mac: Keka or The Unarchiver) and choose the .xml inside. A file named calls-….xml is your call log,
not your texts.
Step 3: make the PDF
- Open iPhone Texts to PDF (despite the name, it reads Android backups too), choose Android, and choose your sms-….xml file. Nothing is uploaded; big files with photos take a minute or two to read.
- Pick the conversation. Texts with the same person are grouped even when the number was saved in different ways (0412 345 678 and +61 412 345 678). Group MMS conversations are listed separately.
- Set the dates and time zone, check the preview, then click Save as PDF (choose "Save as PDF" as the printer) or save a spreadsheet.
The PDF starts with a summary: who the conversation is with (with phone numbers), the period, how many messages, the backup file's name and when it was made, and a SHA-256 fingerprint of the file. Then every message is listed by day with its time and sender. Photos sent by MMS appear in place; messages that failed to send or were never sent (drafts) are marked.
What a lawyer usually wants
Ask yours, because courts differ. Commonly: the whole conversation for a period rather than hand-picked messages; each message's date, time and sender with phone numbers; photos in place; page numbers; and a note of where the messages came from. Keep the phone and the original XML file, and don't delete messages after exporting them.
Things to know
- RCS / "chat" messages (Google Messages' chat features) are only in the backup if your phone and SMS Backup & Restore version back them up; check the preview.
- Names: contact names come from the backup. In group chats a person shows by name if you've also texted them one-to-one; otherwise by number.
- This page and tool aren't legal advice. Whether a document is accepted is up to your lawyer and the court.