How to export and back up your Chai chats on Android

Last updated September 1, 2026 · Android and iPhone

This guide is maintained by the developer of LonelyTavern, a private character-chat app. It exists because we watched someone lose months of Chai history and rebuild it by hand. The method below is what worked.

The short answer

Chai has no export. There is no button, no download, and no file. What you can see in the app is the only copy of your conversations, and it lives on Chai's servers under Chai's rules.

Why this matters more than it used to

In April 2026, Chai ran a backend test that hid every message older than 14 days. It applied to paying Ultra subscribers too, and it came with no warning. Some people lost conversations a year or more old. After the backlash, Chai's founder said on Reddit that extending chat histories was the team's top priority and that a fix was days away. He also mentioned a coming basic tier with message limits.

Take the lesson, not the reassurance. Your history is a storage cost on someone else's balance sheet, and the retention policy is whatever that cost allows this quarter. The only chats you truly keep are the ones you have a copy of.

How to save a Chai chat today

Nothing can pull the text out for you, so you take pictures of it. This is tedious, and it works.

1. Screenshot the whole conversation. Scroll to the top and work down, overlapping each shot slightly so no message is cut in half. A long chat means hundreds of screenshots. Accept it, and keep them in one folder, in order.
2. Turn the screenshots into text. An AI assistant that reads images can transcribe a batch at a time; ask for a plain transcript with a speaker label on every line. Optical character recognition apps also work. For a long chat, expect the assistant to cost a few dollars, depending on the model.
3. Clean the transcript. Overlapping shots produce duplicate lines, app chrome such as timestamps and buttons leaks in, and speakers get swapped. Read it through. This step takes longer than the screenshots did.
4. Store it where no app can delete it. A text file in your own cloud storage or on your computer. From here on, Chai's retention policy is Chai's problem.

Do this before you need it. Last time there was no warning.

Continuing the story somewhere else

A transcript is a backup. To keep chatting, you need an app that imports chat history, and you need the character.

Most roleplay apps that import chats read the Tavern chat format: a plain-text file with one message per line, each carrying the speaker and the text. Any capable AI model can reshape a clean transcript into it in one request. LonelyTavern documents the exact format on its import screen, so you can check the file before you import it.

The character has to be rebuilt. Chai bots are defined by a description you mostly can't see, so write a new one: who they are, how they talk, and the situation you were in. Your transcript is the best reference you will ever have for the voice.

Leaving Character.AI as well? Its export works differently; see our Character.AI guide.

About the model

People leave Chai for two reasons: the chats disappear, and the writing is weak. Chai runs its own models, and you cannot change them. Apps that take your own API key let you pick the model instead: DeepSeek, Claude, GPT, or anything a router such as OpenRouter offers, including free ones. The difference in writing is not subtle, and it's the part of the move people don't expect to enjoy.

Chai is an independent product of its developer. LonelyTavern is not affiliated with or endorsed by Chai. Details about Chai's history retention reflect public reporting as of September 2026 and may have changed since.