Guide
How to open the Snapchat export zip file
Snapchat emailed a link, you clicked it, and now there’s a file called something like mydata~a1b2c3.zip sitting in your Downloads folder. Here’s how to open it on each platform, what you’ll find inside, and the two mistakes that quietly damage an export before you’ve even started.
On Windows
Right-click the mydata~….zip file and choose Extract All…, then pick a destination and let it run. Resist the urge to simply double-click: Windows will happily show you the contents of a zip in what looks like an ordinary folder window, but the files are still compressed and still inside the archive. Opening the export that way makes it look extracted when it isn’t, and anything you copy out one file at a time is slow and easy to leave half-finished. A multi-gigabyte export can take several minutes to extract properly — let it finish.
On macOS
Double-click the zip. Finder unpacks it into a folder of the same name alongside the original, and you can delete neither until you’re sure the extraction completed — keep the zip until you’ve confirmed the folder looks right. If macOS refuses to open it, the download was almost certainly truncated; grab it again rather than hunting for a repair tool.
On a phone
Both iPhone and Android can open a zip — iOS through the Files app, Android through its own Files app — but a Memories export is usually the wrong shape for a phone. These archives routinely run to many gigabytes, and unpacking one means having room for the zip and its extracted contents at the same time. If a computer is available, use it. If it isn’t, leave the archive alone and upload the .zip as-is — MemoriesExport takes the zip directly, which is the only practical route on a phone anyway.
What you’ll see once it’s open
The export isn’t a photo album. You get a set of folders: an html folder of browsable pages, a json folder holding the actual data, and your media. The page to start with is the HTML index, which opens in a browser and gives you a readable view of everything Snapchat holds on your account. The file that matters most for your photos, though, is memories_history.json — it carries the capture date and GPS for every memory, because the media files themselves carry neither. There’s a full tour in what’s inside a Snapchat export.
Two mistakes to avoid
Don’t extract multiple parts into one folder. A large library arrives as several zips — mydata~….zip, then -2, -3 and so on. The parts reuse the same internal folder names, so extracting them into a single destination means later parts overwrite earlier ones and you silently lose memories. Give every part its own folder. The details are in why your export came as several zip files.
Don’t rename the zips. The part number in the filename isn’t decoration — it records the order Snapchat split your library in, which is used to keep memories in sequence across part boundaries. Rename them and that ordering information is gone.
Then: the dates
Once you can see the files, you’ll notice the thing everyone notices — every photo and video is dated the day you downloaded it, and none of them have a location. That’s not a broken export; Snapchat just never wrote the metadata into the media, leaving it in memories_history.json instead. MemoriesExport reads that file and writes the real capture date and GPS back into each photo and video (including the QuickTime location atom Apple Photos needs for videos), merges your overlays, and hands back a ready-to-import zip. You can feed it the original zip parts without extracting anything.
Still waiting on the download itself? See why Snapchat export links expire and how long an export should take.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I open the mydata~….zip file Snapchat sent me?
- On Windows, right-click it and choose 'Extract All' — don't just double-click, which only previews the contents. On a Mac, double-click and Finder unpacks it into a folder next to the zip. Either way you end up with a folder containing an html folder, a json folder and your memories.
- Do I need to unzip it at all?
- Not to fix it. MemoriesExport accepts the zip parts exactly as Snapchat delivered them, which is the safest route because nothing gets renamed or reshuffled on the way in. Unzipping is only necessary if you want to browse the export yourself first.
- Can I open a Snapchat export on my phone?
- You can open it, but it's rarely a good idea. A full Memories export is often many gigabytes, which most phones will struggle to unpack and store. If you're on a phone, upload the .zip file itself rather than trying to extract it — and if you have the choice, do the whole thing on a computer.
- The zip won't open, or says it's corrupt. What now?
- That almost always means the download didn't finish — export links are large and time-limited, so an interrupted or expired download leaves a truncated file. Re-download the part from your Snapchat link rather than trying to repair the zip.
- There are several zip files. Do I unzip them into the same folder?
- No — that's the one mistake worth avoiding. The parts use overlapping internal paths, so extracting them on top of each other overwrites files. Give each part its own folder, or skip extracting altogether and hand over the original zips.