How it works
Three steps, one of which is just waiting for Snapchat
Getting the export out of Snapchat is the fiddly part, so that step is here tap by tap, including the two switches that decide whether your archive contains any photos at all.
Ask Snapchat for your data
This is the longest step and the one nobody can hurry, because Snapchat builds the archive at its own pace and emails it when it's done. Your side of it takes about two minutes.
Every tap is below. Snapchat has rearranged this flow more than once, so these are drawn from the version that's live now rather than copied from an older guide. If what's on your screen doesn't match, look for the wording rather than the position.
- 1
Open Snapchat and tap your face, top-left
The camera screen is what opens first. Your Bitmoji (or a plain circle, if you've never made one) sits in the top-left corner of every screen in the app. Tap it. That's your profile.
- 2
Tap the gear, top-right
Your profile shows your name, your username and a row of buttons. The settings gear is in the opposite corner from the one you just tapped, top-right, next to the Share button.
- 3
Scroll a long way down to Privacy Controls, then tap My Data
Settings is long. Scroll past My Account and Additional Services until you reach the heading Privacy Controls, then tap My Data, just above Generative AI Settings.
It opens a web page and may ask you to log in again. That's normal.
- 4
Switch on “Export your Memories” and “Export JSON Files”
You'll see a list headed Select data to include, all switched off. Turn on two:
“Export your Memories”: the photos and videos themselves.
“Export JSON Files”: the dates, locations and captions, which is the half this site reads. Skip the blue “Request Only Memories” shortcut: it doesn't let you check this one.
- 5
Leave the rest alone
Everything else is optional and only makes the export bigger and slower. Tap Next, bottom-right. For reference, the ones you're walking past are:
- User Information
- Chat History
- Spotlight
- Shopping
- Support History
- Ranking And Location
- Other Media
- Other
- My AI
- Export Shared Stories
- Export Chat Media
- 6
Choose All Time, check the email address, Submit
Pick All Time. Anything shorter quietly leaves older memories out, and nothing warns you.
Check the email address under the calendar: the download link goes there and nowhere else. Then Submit.
- 7
Wait. Often a day or two
Snapchat says up to 7 days, and big exports can take longer. Requesting again doesn't speed it up. Close the app: you'll get an email.
- 8
Watch for “Your Snapchat data is ready for download”
That's the exact subject line, from Team Snapchat. Check spam if it's been a few days. It's a transactional email from a large sender and it does sometimes land there.
The email contains a link back to the same My Data page you started from.
- 9
Open Your exports instead of submitting a new request
This is where most people go wrong. The link opens the same Select data to include list you started on. Don't fill it in again: that just orders a second export.
Scroll to the Your exports box above it and download from there.
- 10
Download everything, quickly, then bring it here
The links expire within days, so download straight away. Big accounts arrive as several ZIPs of about 2GB: get every one, because a missing part means missing memories.
Then drop them all onto the homepage together, still zipped. If Safari unzipped them into folders, drop the folders.
Those are drawings, not screenshots. No real account appears in any of them. Snapchat moves this flow around every so often, so match the wording rather than the exact position on your screen.
One email, two if you pick both days, then we’re done. We don’t keep a list, and there’s no newsletter, ever.
Drop it in below
No need to unzip anything, and if your Mac already did, drop the folders in as they are. If Snapchat split your export into several ZIPs, drop them all in together: only the first one holds your dates.
There's no upload step. Everything happens in this tab, on your own machine: no account, no Snapchat login, nothing from your export sent anywhere. Turn off your Wi-Fi once the page has loaded and it still works.
Big exports are happiest on a laptop or desktop, with this tab left in front.
Get your memories back, dated
Dates. Every photo and video gets its capture time written inside the file, where Apple Photos, Google Photos and Immich look, to the second and on the clock of the place you took it.
Locations. Almost every photo and video gets its own, matched exactly. The rare few that can't be told apart share their spot if they were taken in one place, marked approximate, and stay blank if not.
Captions. Text, stickers and drawings go back onto photos and are drawn into every frame of videos. Long videos Snapchat chopped into 10 second pieces are joined back into one.
Saving. In Chrome or Edge you pick a folder and the photos land in it. You need room for your export twice while it runs, and a full disk pauses it instead of losing anything. Safari and Firefox give you one ZIP and start over if stopped.
That’s the whole thing
If your export has already arrived, the drop zone is waiting on the homepage.