4 Ways to Print Text Messages From Android

Tim Fisher has more than 30 years' of professional technology experience. He's been writing about tech for more than two decades and serves as the SVP and General Manager of Lifewire.

Printing text messages from Android is completely possible, even though Google doesn't provide an obvious way to do it. As helpful as a big print button in the Messages app would be, that's not how this works. You can print one, a few, or all your texts directly from your phone or through your computer.

These directions apply specifically to the Google Messages app, and were created using a Pixel phone running Android 13.

Make Screenshots From Your Phone

• Good for capturing context.
• You can mark up the screenshot.
• Doesn't require a computer or special app.

• Might require more ink than you want to use.
  
• A bit much if you just need to print one message.

Make a screenshot of your texts if you want to capture everything you see on the screen, including back-and-forth responses. After you take the screenshot on Android, you can crop it if you want to hide parts of it, and then print it directly from your Android phone.

If you're unable to print from your phone, it might be because your printer isn't wireless. In that case, email it to yourself and print it from a desktop computer.

See our How to Send a Picture in Gmail guide if you need help attaching the screenshot to an email. Our Easy Way to Print a Single Gmail Message guide explains how to print the screenshot from your computer. Other email accounts work similarly, even if you don't use Gmail.

Copy Texts to a Computer

• Good for collating messages from different conversations.
  
• You can edit the message before you print.
  
• Ideal for wired printers.

• Requires you to complete several steps.
• Might not hold up in court if this is where the messages will end up.

If there are just one or two messages you want to print, you can do so easily by copying those messages. Press and hold any text to see a menu with options. Tap the copy button.

With the text copied, you now have several options for getting it onto your computer. The idea is to put the text anywhere that you can also access from a computer.

For example, with the Google Keep app (it's probably already installed), open a new note and tap and hold to find the Paste option. Then, you can open Keep on your computer, select the note you made from your phone, and highlight the message you want to print.

With the text highlighted on your computer, print like you would normally (with the Ctrl+P or Command+P shortcut), but choose Selection only from the print options.

If you'd rather use Google Docs to print the text from Google Keep, use the three-dot menu within the note to find Copy to Google Docs. Once you have the document open, go to File > Print.

View All of Your Texts on a Computer

• Easier to copy several texts, one after the other.
• Screenshotting is supported.

• Requires a computer.

Another way to print text messages from an Android phone is to first view all the texts from a computer. This is really easy to do with Messages for Web. It's a free feature from Google, built-in to your phone, that lets you read and send texts from a computer browser.

Similar to the other methods above, you can use this technique to print highlighted texts. Or, if you'd rather add some context to the texts, you can take a screenshot on Windows of the message and then print the screenshot, or copy individual texts to MS Word, or some other word processor, to edit/print.

An alternative method, if you don't want to use Messages for Web, is Microsoft Phone Link. It's really similar—you can copy texts out of it or take screenshots of any conversation—but it requires an app to be installed on your phone and computer.

Back Up All of Your Texts to a Computer

• Can print every single text saved to your phone.
• Lets you pick certain conversations to export.
• Printing is supported from your phone or a computer.

• Overkill if you just want to print a few messages.
• Most trustworthy method of proving conversation history.

Use the SMS Backup & Restore app to export all your texts, or messages from just specific people. After you choose what to export, you'll be given the option to save the backup to Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, or your phone.

Our article How to Save Text Messages shows how to use this app if you want a walkthrough.

Wherever you save the texts, you can open the full list of messages to print them off. For example, if you choose the local option, after the export is complete, tap Print Conversation to print directly from your phone.

If you back up to a cloud storage service, learn how to open XML files for help viewing the texts or converting them to PDF and other formats. SMS Backup Reader is one example of a great reader for XML files created by SMS Backup & Restore.

Once you've followed the steps above to turn your text messages into a word-processing file, exporting the file to PDF isn't hard at all.

Tap and hold on the image. Tap the three dot button in the top right. Tap Save. The image, on a Pixel for example, will be saved to a folder called Messages in the Photos app.

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