WhatsApp Chat to PDF

WhatsApp's export feature produces a plain text file with one message per line, prefixed by a timestamp and the sender's name. The format differs between platforms — iOS wraps the timestamp in square brackets, Android separates it with a dash — and both variants sprinkle invisible text-direction marks through the file. This parser handles both, along with 12-hour and 24-hour clocks and several date separators.

Two details take more care than they look. Multi-line messages appear as ordinary following lines with no timestamp, so any line that does not begin with a valid timestamp is appended to the previous message rather than dropped. And sender detection has to tolerate colons inside message text — "check this link: https://…" must not be read as a sender named "check this link". The rule used here is that a sender name is short and contains no colon, which handles real names and phone numbers while leaving message bodies intact.

System messages — "Messages are end-to-end encrypted", "You added Priya" — are detected as lines with a timestamp but no sender, and you can include or exclude them. Excluding them usually makes a long chat much easier to read.

The output is laid out as a document rather than a screenshot: a title block with the date range, an optional participant summary with message counts, then the transcript with a horizontal date separator each time the day changes. Each participant gets a distinct colour, kept dark enough to print legibly in greyscale.

The one real limitation is fonts. The PDF uses the standard built-in fonts to stay small, and those cover Latin characters only — so emoji and text in Devanagari, Arabic, Chinese and other non-Latin scripts cannot be drawn and are removed. You are told exactly how many characters were affected. For a chat conducted in English this is usually just the emoji; for one in Hindi or Tamil, most of the content would be lost, so check the count before relying on the result.

Exports commonly matter for legal evidence, insurance claims or simple keepsakes — all reasons the file should never touch someone else's server.