How do I screenshot text messages on an iPhone?

Taking the screenshot

1. Open the thread in Messages and scroll until the messages you want fill the screen.
2. Press both buttons together and let go. On iOS 26 and later the screenshot fills the screen. On older versions a small preview appears in the bottom-left corner instead.
3. Save it. On the full-screen view, swipe up, or tap the checkmark and choose Save to Photos. Tapping the X throws it away. A small corner preview saves itself if you leave it alone.

If the buttons are awkward, turn on Back Tap: Settings, Accessibility, Touch, Back Tap, then set Double Tap to Screenshot. Two taps on the back of the phone take the picture. That matters for the next step.

How to show the time on every message

Messages hides most send times. It shows a date and time above a group of messages and nothing beside each one. To see them, put a finger on the conversation and drag it to the left. The time appears next to every bubble, and disappears the moment you let go.

So hold the drag with one hand and take the screenshot with the other, or double-tap the back of the phone if you set up Back Tap. It takes a few tries. It is the only way a screenshot of the thread will carry the time of each message.

How to show who sent it

The name at the top of the thread is whatever you saved in your own contacts. Anyone reading your screenshot sees that label, not the number behind it. Tap the name at the top to open the contact card and take one more screenshot showing the phone number or email address. In a group chat, each sender's name appears above their messages.

Capturing a long conversation

One screen at a time. The Full Page option you may have seen after a screenshot works in Safari, Mail and Notes; Messages does not offer it. For a long thread, scroll up to the first message you need, screenshot, scroll down by a little less than a screen, and repeat, so each picture overlaps the one before. The overlap is how a reader can see that nothing was skipped.

Number the pictures as you go, or rename them once they are on a computer. Photos sorts by the time each screenshot was taken, which only matches the order of the conversation if you took them in order.

If a message says Edited

A screenshot captures the wording on screen now. If a bubble is marked Edited, tap that word first to open the earlier versions, then take the screenshot. Who can see edited and unsent messages explains what that shows.

Getting the screenshots onto a Windows PC

• A few pictures: select them in Photos, tap Share, and email them to yourself.
• Many pictures: plug the iPhone into the PC with its cable, unlock it, tap Trust, then open the Photos app on Windows and choose Import.
• iCloud Photos turned on: they are already at icloud.com, and in the iCloud app for Windows if you installed it.

To make one file, select the pictures on the PC, print them, and choose Microsoft Print to PDF as the printer. Untick Fit picture to frame first, or Windows cuts off the top and bottom of each screenshot.

When a screenshot is the right tool

Most of the time. Showing a friend what someone said, keeping a confirmation number, saving a message you like, sending a landlord one text: a screenshot does each of those in seconds, and no software does it better.

It gets hard in two places. A thread of hundreds of messages becomes an evening of scrolling and a pile of pictures to put in order. And when someone may dispute the record, a screenshot shows what a screen looked like rather than what was sent, which is the subject of whether screenshots are enough for court.

For either case, the alternative is to copy the conversation from the phone's own records rather than the screen. Exporting iPhone messages to PDF compares the ways to do that, including ScribeHold, which does it on Windows over a USB cable. For a handful of messages, take the screenshots; they are free and you are done in a minute.