In this article
Telegram Desktop can write your chats to a folder on your computer: one conversation or the whole account, as a readable web page or as structured data, with the photos and files alongside.
It is genuinely useful and it produces the least protected copy of your messages that will ever exist. Both halves of that sentence matter, and the second one gets left out of every explanation of this feature.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Export a single conversation, with a date range and only the media you want.
- check_circle Export the whole account, and know what is and is not in it.
- check_circle Choose between the readable format and the machine-readable one.
- check_circle Understand the twenty-four hour delay, which is a security feature aimed at somebody else.
This lives on the desktop app only — there is no equivalent screen on a phone.
folder Two exports, two screens
The one people want is usually the smaller one. Inside any conversation on Telegram Desktop, the menu has Export chat history, and it lets you pick a date range and tick which kinds of media to include. That produces a folder for that conversation alone.
The other is under Settings, Advanced, Export Telegram data, and it covers the account: your contacts, your private chats, the groups and channels you are in, and the record of your sessions. It is the one to use if you are leaving, if you need an archive for legal reasons, or if you simply want to know what is held.
Which export, and what happens next
The format decides what the archive is good for, and the fourth panel is the part that is nobody's favourite and matters most.
description The readable format
code The structured format
storage Everything at once
warning What you now have on your disk
Worth saying plainly: the export is the weakest copy of your chats that exists. Decide where it lives before you make it.
timer The twenty-four hour delay
Ask for an account export from a device that signed in recently and it does not start. Telegram announces the request to your other devices and holds it for about a day, during which you can cancel it by ending that session.
The delay is not aimed at you. Someone who has just taken over an account wants the archive, because the archive is everything at once. Making the request loud and slow means the real owner gets a warning and a day to act, and it is one of the better-designed protections on the platform.
Two practical consequences. If you need an export in a hurry, do it from a computer you have been signed in on for a while. And if that notification ever arrives when you did not ask for it, treat it as an emergency: open Devices, end every session but your own, and set a cloud password.
settings Doing it
- Open Telegram Desktop The phone app cannot do this.
- For one conversation Open it, then the menu in the top corner, then Export chat history.
- For everything Settings, Advanced, Export Telegram data.
- Choose the format and the limits Readable or structured, which media, and a size cap per file. The cap is what keeps the export finite.
- Pick the destination deliberately Not the desktop, not a synced cloud folder. Somewhere you have chosen for it.
This page is how to make one and what to do with it. The curriculum step covers the archive itself: how the folder is laid out, what each part of the structured format contains, and how to search or reuse an export once you have it.
At a glance
- 1Export a chat
On Desktop choose a date range and which media to include.
- 2Whole account
Export everything except Secret Chats.
- 3The delay
A new session waits before exporting, to stop thieves.
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