How to turn your text messages into a book

Years of messages with a partner, a parent or a friend can become a book you hold: bubbles as in Messages, large photos, a chapter for each month and a cover. Textbound makes that book as a PDF on your Mac, straight from the Messages history, ready to print at home or at a print shop.

Updated November 2, 2026

Free for the newest 100 messages of any conversation · macOS 14 or later

How to make the book

1. Bring the conversation to your Mac: on the iPhone turn on Messages in iCloud (Settings › [your name] › iCloud › See All › Messages in iCloud), and on the Mac choose Messages › Settings › iMessage › Enable Messages in iCloud. Wait until it has synced.
2. Open Textbound, allow Full Disk Access once, and pick the person or the group chat.
3. Choose the dates: All Time for the whole story, or Custom Dates… for one year, a trip, the months before a wedding.
4. Press Export (⌘E), choose Book and PDF, and save it.
5. Open the PDF in Preview to look through it, then print it or send it to a print shop.

What is in the book

• A cover with the name of the conversation, the dates and, with Pro, a photo from it.
• A chapter for each month, so a long story is easy to leaf through.
• Bubbles as in Messages, yours on one side and theirs on the other, with names in a group chat.
• Large photos, where they were sent (Pro), and a video's first frame. Voice messages are listed with their length.
• Every word as it was sent. Textbound reads the messages themselves, so nothing is retyped.

Printing it

At home, any printer will do: open the PDF in Preview and press ⌘P. For a bound book, send the PDF to a print shop or a book printing service that accepts PDF files. Textbound makes US Letter or A4 pages (Textbound › Settings › Paper); if the service needs another page size, ask it to scale the pages to fit. Until you send the file, the conversation stays on your Mac: Textbound has no account and uploads nothing.

Messages from someone who has died

Many people make a book from the messages of a parent, a partner or a friend who is gone. Two things help. First, check that nothing is deleted on its own: on the iPhone, Settings › Apps › Messages › Keep Messages should say Forever, and on the Mac, set Messages › Settings › General › Keep messages to Forever as well. Second, make the PDF now, while the conversation is on your devices; once it is a file, it no longer depends on a phone or an account.

Questions