How To Export Your Discord Chats [Easiest Method]

Over the past few years, Discord has managed to evolve from its gamer-centric user base and attract people of multi-faceted backgrounds. How Discord managed to achieve this is plain to see; they made chatting with your friends even more fun by devising an arsenal of unique and innovative features.

Automated bots, mini-games, screen-sharing, etc., coupled with its user-friendly interface and easy handling, truly make Discord a great app for socializing with people.

However, Discord still lacks some features. One of these features includes the ability to export your chats natively. There’s no need to worry, as this is still achievable by following the guide below using a nifty third-party tool.

Ways of Exporting Discord Chats

Exporting your Discord chats is possible only on Windows, Linux and macOS. Follow the steps below to get started:

1. The Classic Copy-Paste

The most simple and obvious way to export your Discord chats is to just copy and paste them on Notepad. This is not the most elegant method, but it’s one that can save you in a pinch when you need it.

1. Highlight the chat by dragging the mouse and holding the left click.
   

   

2. Once highlighted, right-click to open up the menu.
   

   

3. Select Copy.
   

   

4. Open up Notepad.
   

   

5. Right-click again and select Paste from the menu.
   

   

6.  The chat should be copied on to the Notepad. Finally, save it as a .txt file by clicking on File and then Save. 
   

   

2. Using DiscordChatExporter

DiscordChatExporter is a free and open-source tool for exporting your Discord chats. It is available for Windows, Linux and macOS. This tool allows you to create local backups of your chats

It has 2 versions: a graphical user interface (GUI) and a command line interface (CLI). Currently, the GUI version is limited to Windows only. Follow the steps below to use DiscordChatExporter to export and save your Discord chats.

Using GUI

1. From this link, download the GUI version. The GUI version is labelled ‘DiscordChatExporter.zip’.
   

   

2. Once the download finishes, extract the file to your desired destination.
3. Open the app. It may ask you permission for installing some required components. Allow it to do so.
   

   

4. The app requires that you enter your Discord user token. This cannot be found straight away from your Discord account info. Luckily, the developers of DiscordChatExporter have described steps to get your token. Follow these steps accordingly.
   
   Note: Your Discord token is private information and not meant to be shared with anyone. Doing so can lead to the loss of your account.

   

5. Once you have access to your Discord token, enter it on the app.
   

   

6. You’ll be able to select your desired chats and export them now. Hold the Shift key and select the first and last text channels on the lists to export all of them. Click on the download button to export the desired chats.
   

   

7. A menu asking for the output path and file type should appear. Choose the desired options and click on Export. Select the TXT format as it is smaller in size, easier to access, share and edit.
   

   

8. Consequently, the app will begin the process of exporting the chats. This may take a while. You can track the progress by the yellow loading bar, just below where you entered the token.
   

   

9. Finally, you can view a complete log of your chat history in the exported file. The file will be found at the output path you set before.
   

   

Using the CLI version

The CLI version is not user-friendly, hence, not recommended. However, since it’s the only version available for macOS and Linux users to use, we’ll have to make do. Follow the steps below to export your Discord chat using the CLI version:

1. Firstly, download .NET v7.0 Runtime from here. We’re using the macOS version for this demonstration. It is necessary to run the CLI version of DiscordChatExporter. Install it when it finishes downloading.
   

   

2. From this link, download the file labelled ‘DiscordChatExporterCli.zip’.
   

   

3. When it finishes downloading, extract the file to your C drive as that is where .NET Runtime was installed.
4. Open a Command Prompt window or macOS Terminal or the Linux CLI, depending on your OS. On Windows, open the command prompt Window with administrator privileges. 
   

   

5. Run the following command on your terminal interface:
   cd [destination path of where you extracted the DiscordChatExporter CLI]

   

    

6. Once done, you will now require 2 things; your user token and your channel ID. You can follow the guides here by the developers of DiscordChatExporter for obtaining these. Copy them on to the Notepad.
7. Once you have your user token and channel ID, run this command:

   dotnet DiscordChatExporter.Cli.dll

   

8. To begin exporting, enter the command below. Replace the “token” with your actual token and the 0000 with your channel ID.

   dotnet DiscordChatExporter.Cli.dll export -t “token” -c 0000

   

9. The exported file will be find in the same directory where the CLI version of the app was extracted. It will be exported as an HTML file as this is the default format of the program.
   

   

Conclusion

It is worth noting that while most texting apps have a native chat export feature, Discord does not have one. This is very surprising, since the developers of Discord are always adding new features to the app. Thankfully, DiscordChatExporter is here to facilitate us with this ordeal.

The CLI version of DiscordChatExporter has other handy features which make it superior to its GUI counterpart. Read the guides linked here for a full list of its commands and capabilities.