Get the photos out of your message backup

Photos sent by text message are easy to lose: in an Android XML backup they are stored as text (base64), in an iPhone backup they are renamed to codes. Threadlode exports them as normal files.

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Steps

Open the backup in Threadlode.
In Export, choose all conversations or one, optionally a date range.
Click Archive (.zip). The zip has a folder attachments/ with one subfolder per conversation.

File names

Each file starts with the date and time it was sent, followed by its original name – for example 20240101-101000 IMG_0001.JPG – so the files sort by date in any file manager. The file’s modified time inside the zip is also set to the message date.

Formats

Files are exported exactly as they are in the backup – no re-compression. iPhone photos are often HEIC; Windows needs the free HEIF extension to show them, and most photo apps can import them.

Questions and answers

Can I export only the photos, without the HTML pages?

The archive always contains the pages and the CSV/Excel files too – they are small. You can simply use the attachments folder.

Last updated: 2026-10-26