Google Chat Takeout Reader

What is inside a Google Chat export?

Everything sits in a Google Chat folder, in JSON, with one folder per conversation:

• Groups/DM … and Groups/Space …: one folder per direct message and per space or group conversation.
• messages.json: every message in the conversation, with its sender, date and text.
• group_info.json: who is in the conversation, and the space's name.
• Shared files: images and documents posted in the conversation, saved next to the JSON.
• Users/…/user_info.json: whose export this is.

A message looks like this:

{
  "messages": [
    {
      "creator": {
        "name": "Alex Rivera",
        "email": "alex@example.com",
        "user_type": "Human"
      },
      "created_date": "Monday, March 4, 2024 at 10:12:00 AM UTC",
      "text": "Running five minutes late",
      "topic_id": "a1b2c3",
      "message_id": "a1b2c3/a1b2c3"
    }
  ]
}

The date is written out in words, in your account's language, so it reads differently in a French or Spanish export. For the JSON format across the rest of Takeout, see Google Takeout JSON files.

What TakeoutReader shows about your Google Chat

TakeoutReader is a Google Takeout viewer that reads the whole archive in your browser. For Google Chat it shows:

• Messages and conversations, split into direct messages and spaces.
• How many messages you sent, out of the total.
• The years covered and your busiest year.
• The people you message most, by direct messages exchanged. Bots are left out.
• How many files were shared.

It counts and never quotes: the text of your messages is never shown, kept or put in the PDF, CSV or text downloads. It reads the export whatever your account's language, and next to Chat it reads the rest of your Takeout too, from Gmail to My Activity.

How to open Google Chat JSON files by hand

Unzip the archive, open Google Chat/Groups, and open a conversation's messages.json in a browser or a text editor. Firefox shows JSON as a tree you can fold, which helps for a long conversation. It is fine for finding one message. For anything more, like counting, comparing years or seeing who you talk to most, a reader saves you hours. See how to open Google Takeout files for unzipping on each system.

What is not in the export

• Messages sent with history off. Google deletes them after 24 hours, so Takeout never sees them.
• Deleted messages. A work or school organization may keep copies under its own retention rules, but those stay with the organization, not in your Takeout.
• Classic Hangouts, in older archives. Its history was moved into Google Chat, but an older export can hold a separate Hangouts folder that TakeoutReader does not read.

Keep your Chat export safe

A Chat export is years of private conversations in one ZIP. Keep it on a device only you use, and delete it when you are done. Avoid online viewers that ask you to upload it, since that hands every message to a stranger's server. TakeoutReader reads the file on your device and never uploads it. More in is Google Takeout safe.

Frequently asked questions