As MS is going to shut Skype for good on 5 May 2025, some may want to export their chat history. On Macs this is a mild nightmare, the export functions vary by Skype version, are only available for Windows or many support articles either talk about a different version or something is so wrong that it’s impossible to export.
Shall we gather in this thread how to do this? I’m on Skype version 8.136.0.203 and haven’t yet found a method that works.
I don’t think you need the Mac client at all. Unless you plan to switch to Teams, you can use the Skype web interface to export your data.
To test it, I just signed in and exported my contacts (exports as a CSV file), and I have requested my messages and files. It looks like the latter may take a little bit of time, since it may involve a lot of data. My request is currently showing as “pending”. I understand the output will be a tar archive. I’ll update when I know more.
After about an hour, Skype exported my messages.
The good news is that it looks like all of the messages I could see in the Skype client were there in the export file.
It’s also good news that the export file is a JSON file, which is a structured, plain-text format that can make it fairly straightforward for someone with programming/scripting ability to manipulate the data or to import it into other systems.
At the same time, it’s bad news that the export file is a JSON file. Technically, it’s human readable, but the vast majority of people won’t have the time, patience, and/or ability to decipher it.
I expect that someone will end up writing a parser that can take these Skype export files and convert them into something readable by people who aren’t tech specialists. I also wouldn’t be surprised to hear that at least some third party chat tools will develop Skype import functions that can digest these JSON files.
Interesting and very useful. Thank you.
A JSON file is pretty useless though, but at least I got my data out from the dying SKYPE.