How to print text messages for court from an Android phone

Android gives you two workable routes: screenshots organised into a transcript, or an SMS backup app that exports the raw messages. Here is how to do each and when to choose which.

Option 1: Screenshots into a transcript

Open the conversation in Google Messages or Samsung Messages and scroll to the oldest message you need.
Tap and hold a bubble, or tap it once, to show its exact time. In Google Messages, tapping a bubble shows the time underneath it.
Take a screenshot (power + volume down on most phones). Scroll so the last bubble is still visible at the top of the next screenshot, then screenshot again, all the way to the newest message.
Leave the images untouched. Do not crop or annotate them.
Upload them to Court Texts to get a numbered, dated transcript PDF with every screenshot attached as an exhibit.

Option 2: An SMS backup export

Apps such as SMS Backup & Restore can export a conversation to a file or a printable PDF. This captures every message with its stored timestamp and phone number, which is stronger if the other side may claim the screenshots were edited. The exports are plain and unnumbered, and MMS images sometimes come out separately, so you may still want to organise the result into a transcript.

WhatsApp on Android

WhatsApp has a built-in export: open the chat, tap the menu, choose More › Export chat, and pick with or without media. The export is a text file that many people then screenshot anyway. Screenshots of the chat work with Court Texts the same as SMS screenshots.

What the court wants to see

Chronological order with numbering, so anyone can refer to "message 42".
Sender, date and time on every message.
The original images attached, so the transcript can be checked against them.
Your statement, in person or in writing, that the messages came from your phone and were not altered.

Turn your screenshots into a transcript PDF for court →