Your Snapchat export is here: what's inside the ZIP
Pick your ZIPs and the tool sorts your Memories into a folder on this phone.
No export yet? The 4-step guide
Updated November 8, 2026 · Not affiliated with Snapchat.
By GetMemoriesOut. We wrote these guides from a real Snapchat export that we opened and counted, with Memories from 2016 to 2026. When something couldn't be checked, the guide says so.
What to do with it, in 3 steps
- Download every ZIP and leave them as they are. The first one holds the list of your Memories.
- Don't unzip them. It doubles the space they take, and on a Mac, Finder shifts the files' time.
- Drop all the ZIPs into GetMemoriesOut. The recap is free.
To only look inside, double-click a ZIP. On Windows you can also right-click it and choose Extract All.
One ZIP or several
Snapchat splits a big export into ZIPs of about 2 GB each, with the last one smaller. The first has the base name, for example mydata~….zip, and the next ones end in -2, -3, and so on.
Download them all and leave them as they are. A tool like GetMemoriesOut reads the ZIPs directly, and unzipping them doubles the space they take up on your drive.
Snapchat changed this format twice in 2025 and 2026, so yours may differ in the details.
The first ZIP: the HTML page and the JSON
- index.html opens in your browser and shows you the export.
- html/ holds the export's pages, including memories_history.html, a page that shows your Memories on screen.
- json/ holds the list of your Memories, the one tools read, with the date, time, type and location of each Memory. No other ZIP has it.
The photos and videos themselves are in two folders, memories/ and chat_media/.
Two media folders
memories/ holds your Memories, the ones in the app's Memories tab. chat_media/ holds the photos and videos sent in your chats.
In the export we studied, chat_media/ was much bigger and filled the first ZIPs, with the Memories coming after.
File names: -main and -overlay
Each Memory has a name like YYYY-MM-DD_identifier-main.mp4: the day, a unique ID, then -main for the media.
- -main.mp4 is a video, -main.jpg is a photo.
- The overlay, a second file, carries the text, stickers or drawing placed on the Memory.
In the export we studied, every file had its extension. Some people report files without one in other exports. Adding .jpg or .mp4 to the end of the name usually lets them open.
Videos split into 10-second clips
A video longer than 10 seconds comes as several -main.mp4 files, one per 10-second clip. Your camera roll shows them as separate videos.
GetMemoriesOut puts the clips back together into one dated video, with no loss of quality, when their order is certain.
When it can't be sure of the order, it leaves the clips separate, each with its own date. On photos, it puts the overlay back on top.
Opening it all on Windows and Mac
- Windows: double-click the ZIP to see what's inside, or right-click it and choose Extract All.
- Mac: double-click the ZIP and Finder creates a folder next to it. Give a big ZIP a few minutes. Finder also shifts the files' time by your Mac's offset from UTC.
Unzipping is fine for looking around. To date and sort your Memories, drop the ZIPs into the tool as they are.
What's next
If your photos show today's date or no location, read the date and location guide. If some are missing, count what's missing.
FAQ
- Which ZIP has the list of your Memories?
- The first one, usually the one whose name doesn't end in a number, in the json folder. The other ZIPs don't have it.
- What's in the chat_media folder?
- The photos and videos from your chats. Your Memories are in the memories folder. chat_media can be much bigger.
- Why are there two files for one Memory?
- The -main file is the photo or video. The second one, the overlay, holds the text and stickers on top of it. To see the Memory the way it looked in the app, the two have to be layered.
- Do I need to unzip the ZIPs?
- To look at the files, yes. For GetMemoriesOut, no. Drop the ZIPs as they are and the tool reads them locally, on your computer.