Guide
What's inside a Snapchat data export, file by file
A Snapchat data export is a ZIP file containing a json/ folder of data files, and, depending on what you asked for, a chat_media/ folder of photos and videos saved in chats and a memories/ folder of your Memories. There is usually also an index.html page and html/ folder for browsing in a desktop browser. The JSON files hold the facts (who, when, which conversation, where) and the media folders hold the pictures, but nothing on a picture's file name says who sent it. That split is why the export is complete and still hard to read.
What follows is based on the exports we've worked with and on Lidly's own synthetic demo export. Snapchat changes its export from time to time, so yours may have more files, or slightly different ones.
The top level
| Item | What it is |
|---|---|
mydata~<id>.zip | The export itself. Large ones come as several parts: mydata~<id>.zip, then mydata~<id>-2.zip, -3.zip and so on. See multi-part exports |
index.html and html/ | Snapchat's own viewer, a set of web pages. Snapchat's help page says to open index.html in a browser and use Memories in the left navigation |
json/ | Your data as machine-readable JSON |
chat_media/ | Photos, videos and their caption overlays saved in chats |
memories/ | Your Memories, each as a main file and sometimes an overlay |
The json/ folder
The exact list depends on the categories you selected. These are the files that matter most for looking back:
| File | What's in it |
|---|---|
chat_history.json | Saved chat messages, grouped by conversation. Each one has From, Created, Media Type, Content (the text, if any), IsSender, IsSaved, a Conversation Title for groups, and for media a Media IDs value |
snap_history.json | A log of snaps sent and received: who, when, photo or video. It records that a snap happened; the snap itself is not included |
memories_history.json | One entry per Memory: Date, Media Type, Location, and download links. memories_history.json explained covers it in detail |
friends.json | Your friends list, which maps usernames to display names |
account.json and user_profile.json | Your own account details, including your username |
story_history.json, shared_story.json | Records of stories you posted or took part in |
Other files can appear for things like login history, search history, purchases, Bitmoji and location, matching the categories on Snapchat's request page.
A saved chat message in chat_history.json looks roughly like this (synthetic example):
That Media IDs value is what links the message to a file in chat_media/.
The chat_media/ folder: what the file names mean
Every file starts with a date, YYYY-MM-DD_, then one of a few patterns:
| Pattern | Example (synthetic) | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
_b~ | 2021-03-15_b~EiQSFURF….jpg | A saved photo or video identified by a media ID |
_media~ | 2021-04-20_media~Snapchat-700000025.jpg | A saved photo or video in an older naming scheme, or with a UUID |
_overlay~ | 2021-04-20_overlay~Snapchat-700000025.webp | The caption, sticker or drawing layer for a _media~ file |
The date on a file name is the day, not the exact moment. The sender is nowhere in the name. To find out who sent 2021-03-15_b~EiQS….jpg, you have to find the message in chat_history.json whose media ID points at it, then look up that username in friends.json. Doing that by hand for thousands of files is the job Lidly does on import.
The memories/ folder
Memories come as pairs:
2022-06-25_<uuid>-main.jpgor-main.mp4is the photo or video.2022-06-25_<uuid>-overlay.png, when present, is its caption layer.
The files themselves often don't carry the original capture time or location in a form Photos understands. That information is in memories_history.json. Restoring date and location explains how it gets reattached.
What is not in the export
- Unsaved chats. Messages that disappeared normally aren't kept. Only what you or the other person saved appears.
- The snaps in snap_history.json. That file is a log, not a gallery.
- Anything Snapchat no longer stores. Snapchat's help page notes that some older data may no longer be available.
If you need to know what to tick when requesting, see which Snapchat data toggles to choose.
How to read it all on iPhone
You can unzip the export in the Files app and look through the folders, or open the ZIP directly in Lidly, which reads the JSON, pairs captions with their photos, works out who sent each saved snap, and shows the result as conversations and a Memories timeline. Media it can't place confidently goes to an Unsorted view by date. Opening an export on iPhone compares both approaches.