Can any tool recover My Eyes Only from an export that's already downloaded?

No. If Snapchat did not put the file in the export, there is nothing in the zip to recover — no repair tool, ours included, can produce a photo that was never handed over. A tool that claims otherwise is either re-describing the move-it-out-first step or is wrong.

I forgot my My Eyes Only passcode. Can Snapchat unlock it?

No. Snapchat's support page states that if you forget your passcode, Team Snapchat cannot help you access or recover Snaps in My Eyes Only. The app offers a reset, but resetting deletes the content saved under the old passcode. There is no path that both resets the passcode and keeps the memories.

How do I get My Eyes Only content out before exporting?

In the app, open Memories, unlock the My Eyes Only tab with your passcode, select the items and use the option to move them back into Memories. Anything you move out is then treated as an ordinary memory and is included when you request your data with 'Export your Memories' turned on. You can also export selected items straight to your camera roll from the same screen, which is a good belt-and-braces backup.

Is it obvious from the export which memories are missing?

Not automatically. The export's memories_history.json describes only the memories Snapchat included, so anything left out is absent from both the media and the list — nothing marks it as withheld. The way to check is to count first: note how many items you moved out of My Eyes Only before you requested the export, then look for that many extra entries in the export once it arrives.

Does moving items out of My Eyes Only make them visible to anyone else?

Moving an item back to Memories removes the passcode lock on it, so anyone who can open your unlocked phone and your Snapchat account can see it. If that matters, move items out, request and download the export, then move them back — or export them to your camera roll and delete them from Snapchat entirely once you have a copy you control.

Guide

How to save your My Eyes Only memories before you export Snapchat

Guides · Snapchat export

The short version, before you wait on a download: My Eyes Only is not among the categories Snapchat lists in its data export, so plan on the export arriving without it. No tool — ours included — can pull back something Snapchat never handed over. What you can do is move those memories out of the vault first, and this guide is how.

Why My Eyes Only isn’t in your export

My Eyes Only is a passcode-locked area of Memories. Snapchat’s own help page for it says plainly that if you forget your passcode, Team Snapchat cannot help you access or recover the Snaps inside — the whole design is that Snapchat treats the contents as yours and not readily retrievable on request.

That same design is why the data download leaves it out. Snapchat’s page describing the My Data request lists the categories it contains — login history and account information, profiles, Snap history, saved chat history, Memories, purchase and shop history, support history, friends, location, search history, Bitmoji. My Eyes Only is not among them.

What we could not confirm: we did not find a Snapchat help page that states in so many words “My Eyes Only is excluded from your data download.” The exclusion is an inference from omission — it is missing from the list of what the download contains — and we would rather tell you that than dress an inference up as an official quote. Treat the practical rule as firm and the paperwork behind it as thin: assume it will not be in the export, and act accordingly.

Do this before you request the export

The whole fix is a sequencing problem. Move the memories out of the vault while you still can, and they become ordinary memories that the export includes like anything else. Snapchat does not publish a help article for moving items out of My Eyes Only, so the wording on the buttons may differ from ours depending on your app version; the sequence is what matters.

Open the My Eyes Only tab and unlock it. In Snapchat, go to Memories and switch to the My Eyes Only tab, then enter your passcode. If the passcode is already lost, skip ahead — that case is covered below and it is not a happy one.
Select the items you want to keep. Use the selector to multi-select rather than working through them one by one.
Move them back to Memories. Once an item is out of My Eyes Only it is an ordinary memory, and an ordinary memory is what the data export knows how to include.
Export a copy to your camera roll as well. Press and hold a Snap in Memories and choose Export, or use the selector to pick several at once. It is worth doing even though you are about to request the full export: it gives you a copy in hand now rather than after a wait, and it does not depend on Snapchat’s request queue. The trade-off is that snaps saved this way still land without their real capture date and without GPS, so they carry the same metadata problem the full export has.
Then request your data, with Export your Memories turned on. The full walkthrough is in how to export all your Snapchat Memories.
Move them back in afterwards, if you want to. Nothing stops you re-locking the items in My Eyes Only once the export has been downloaded and checked. One limit worth knowing: Snapchat only lets photo Snaps and video Snaps under 10 seconds be moved into My Eyes Only, so a longer video you moved out may not go back in.

If you already downloaded the export and they’re missing

The export is a snapshot of what Snapchat decided to include at the moment you asked. If My Eyes Only was locked then, those items are not in the zip — not hidden inside it, not in a subfolder, not recoverable with a different tool. Re-downloading the same export will not change what is in it.

The path forward is to move the items out in the app and request a fresh export. That means waiting again, so take the camera-roll copy in the same session as insurance. If the items are gone from the app too, there is no export to request — Snapchat’s help pages are consistent that deleted or passcode-locked-out My Eyes Only content is not recoverable by support.

If you’ve forgotten the passcode

The honest answer here is a bad one. Snapchat Support states that it cannot recover forgotten My Eyes Only passcodes or deleted Snaps, and the reset flow in the app — Memories → My Eyes Only → Options → Forgot Passcode, confirmed with your Snapchat account password — deletes the content that was saved under the old passcode. That is the documented behaviour, not a bug. There is no route that both restores access and keeps the memories.

So before you tap reset, exhaust the other options: try the passcode on a device where you are still signed in and the vault still opens, and check whether you ever saved the same items to your camera roll or another backup. A reset is one-way. Do not treat it as a troubleshooting step.

One related warning from Snapchat’s own page, worth repeating: make sure your Memories are completely backed up before you log out of Snapchat, log in on a different device, or uninstall the app.

How to check what actually came through

Nothing in the export flags an omission, so you have to check by counting rather than by looking for an error.

Count in the app first. Before you request the export, note roughly how many items are in the My Eyes Only tab and how many are in your main Memories. Doing this afterwards is much harder.
Read the export’s own list. The export ships a memories_history.json that describes every memory Snapchat included — date, media type, and often location. What is not in that list was not included at all, so the file is the authoritative answer to “did it come through?”. See what files are in a Snapchat export for how it is laid out.
Don’t confuse two different kinds of missing. When MemoriesExport finishes a job and some media is missing, it says so — “tagged 4,120 of 4,180 memories”, with a note that you may not have uploaded every export part. That shortfall means files the JSON expected but that were not in what you gave us, which nearly always means one of the mydata~*.zip parts was skipped. My Eyes Only items behave differently: they are missing from the JSON and the media, so they never enter the count at all. A job that finishes without that warning does not tell you your vault came through.

What MemoriesExport can and can’t do here

MemoriesExport is the step after the export. You request and download your data from Snapchat yourself, then hand us the zip parts (or an unzipped folder); we write the real capture date and GPS into each file and merge the overlays back on, so your library sorts itself out on import. We never touch your Snapchat account and we never fetch anything from Snapchat’s servers.

Which is exactly why we cannot help with My Eyes Only recovery. We can only fix files that are in the export you give us. Memories that Snapchat withheld, memories you deleted, and content lost to a passcode reset are all outside the scope of anything a repair tool can do. If a service tells you it can pull My Eyes Only out of an existing export, ask it which file in the zip it is reading.

Once you have moved everything out and the fresh export arrives, the ordinary problems apply — blank dates, missing locations, overlays split from their photos — and those we do fix. The first 100 main memories are free, and a one-time $9.99 unlocks the rest for good.

A word on the storage deadline

Much of the urgency around this comes from Snapchat’s change to Memories storage: accounts get 5 GB free, and Snapchat announced in September 2025 that over-limit memories would be subject to deletion after a grace period of about twelve months, which points to deletions around September 2026. Snapchat has not published a to-the-day date, and by its own wording nothing changes for accounts under the 5 GB limit. Do not let a countdown clock on some website push you into a passcode reset. The unhurried, correct order is still: move items out of My Eyes Only, export a camera-roll copy, request your data, then repair the metadata.

Fix my Snapchat export →

Frequently asked questions

Are My Eyes Only memories included in a Snapchat data export?: Assume not. Snapchat's own list of what the My Data download contains — login history and account information, profiles, Snap history, saved chat history, Memories, purchase and shop history, support history, friends, location, search history, Bitmoji — does not include My Eyes Only. If you want those items in an export, move them back into ordinary Memories in the app before you submit the request.
Can any tool recover My Eyes Only from an export that's already downloaded?: No. If Snapchat did not put the file in the export, there is nothing in the zip to recover — no repair tool, ours included, can produce a photo that was never handed over. A tool that claims otherwise is either re-describing the move-it-out-first step or is wrong.
I forgot my My Eyes Only passcode. Can Snapchat unlock it?: No. Snapchat's support page states that if you forget your passcode, Team Snapchat cannot help you access or recover Snaps in My Eyes Only. The app offers a reset, but resetting deletes the content saved under the old passcode. There is no path that both resets the passcode and keeps the memories.
How do I get My Eyes Only content out before exporting?: In the app, open Memories, unlock the My Eyes Only tab with your passcode, select the items and use the option to move them back into Memories. Anything you move out is then treated as an ordinary memory and is included when you request your data with 'Export your Memories' turned on. You can also export selected items straight to your camera roll from the same screen, which is a good belt-and-braces backup.
Is it obvious from the export which memories are missing?: Not automatically. The export's memories_history.json describes only the memories Snapchat included, so anything left out is absent from both the media and the list — nothing marks it as withheld. The way to check is to count first: note how many items you moved out of My Eyes Only before you requested the export, then look for that many extra entries in the export once it arrives.
Does moving items out of My Eyes Only make them visible to anyone else?: Moving an item back to Memories removes the passcode lock on it, so anyone who can open your unlocked phone and your Snapchat account can see it. If that matters, move items out, request and download the export, then move them back — or export them to your camera roll and delete them from Snapchat entirely once you have a copy you control.