Years of photos and videos are sitting inside Snapchat Memories — and they only stay there while your account and its storage allow. Snapchat now caps free Memories storage at 5 GB. The good news: Snapchat gives every user a full official export, completely free. This guide shows both official routes, in the right order, with no risky websites involved.
There are exactly two safe ways to get your Snapchat Memories out: the in-app export for a handful of favourites, and the My Data request for everything at once. Every other "Snapchat memories downloader" you find on Google should be treated with suspicion — if a website asks for your Snapchat username and password, it is not downloading your memories, it is stealing your account. This page walks through the full official export first, because that is the route that saves everything, and then explains the small in-app route and the traps around both.
An export can only contain what Snapchat has actually stored. Before requesting anything, open Memories in the app (swipe up from the camera screen, or tap the photos icon beside the capture button) and check the backup state:
Skipping this step is how people export an archive with their newest Snaps missing.
This is the route that downloads all your Memories at once. You can start it in a browser or inside the app (Profile → Settings → My Data) — the browser route is easier for large accounts:
accounts.snapchat.com and sign in with your Snapchat account — this is Snapchat's own site, the only place outside the app where your password belongsA request that is already in progress cannot be cancelled, so check the email address carefully before submitting. One honest warning: exporting your data does not restore Memories you already deleted — Snapchat can only send what it still holds, and deleted Memories cannot be recovered, even by Snapchat Support.
Snapchat prepares your archive and emails you when it is ready. Small accounts are usually ready within hours; very large accounts can take days — Snapchat says up to seven days in some cases. Two things matter here:
If a link has already expired, nothing is lost — log back in and request the export again. It is free, and nobody needs to be paid to "recover" an expired link.
Inside the download you will find html and json folders and an index.html file you can open in a browser to browse your data. The file that matters most for Memories is memories_history.json — it lists every Memory with its date and a download link. Before you delete anything from your phone or celebrate:
One quirk to expect: the downloaded files arrive with random-looking names and without the original date inside the file, so photo apps initially sort them by download day. The dates are safe in the JSON file — a related guide below shows how to put them back.
If you only need your favourites, skip the big request. Inside Snapchat you can select up to 100 Memories at a time and export them straight to your camera roll:
It is honest but slow for a big archive — a decade of Memories means repeating the batch many times. Use it for favourites, use the My Data request for everything.
accounts.snapchat.com. The full anatomy of this trap is explained in one of the case guides below.
Every step above — the My Data request, the email, the download and the files — shown live on screen.
▶️ Watch Full VideoYes. The My Data request on accounts.snapchat.com and the in-app export are both free Snapchat features. You never need to pay a website to download your own Memories, and any site asking for payment plus your password should be closed immediately.
Small accounts are often ready within a few hours. Very large accounts can take several days — Snapchat says up to seven days for the biggest archives. You get an email when it is ready, and the download links then expire within days, so download promptly.
Always. Export first, download every ZIP part, open a few files to verify, and only then delete the account. Once the account is gone, the export route goes with it, and Snapchat Support cannot recover deleted Memories.