Justin Duino / How-to Geek
The easiest way to print text messages from Android is to take screenshots of the messages, put them on a blank document and print it. There are also third-party apps for creating text transcripts that you can then print out.
Text messages practically only live on your Android phone. However, there may be times when you will want a physical copy – whether for a court hearing or personal records. Printing a text conversation isn’t as easy as it sounds, but we’ll get you through it.
How to print screenshots of Android text messages
To keep a sense of authenticity and avoid any kind of backup or transfer tool, it’s best to take screenshots and print them out. It’s a little clunky, but it works.
First, open the text conversation and navigate to the beginning of the part you want to print. To take screenshots on an Android device, press and hold the power button and the volume down button for one second.
An even better option for screenshotting a text conversation is “Scrolling Screenshots”. This captures more of the screen than you can see and takes fewer screenshots. Most Android devices allow you to take scrolling screenshots. Here are instructions on taking screenshots on Samsung Galaxy devices.
Note: Remember that the screenshots should be easy to read. Scrolling screenshots can become very long, making the text small when squeezed onto a single sheet of paper. Crop the screenshots (be careful when cropping if you need screenshots for legal purposes) or spread them across multiple pages.
When you’re done with the screenshots, we’ll add the screenshots to a word processor. We use Google Docs for Android in this guide, but you can just as easily use Microsoft Word. Paste the screenshots into a blank document to get started.
You can resize the screenshots to fit more than one on a page and adjust their readability.
Once you’ve embedded the screenshots, tap the three-dot menu icon in the top right and select “Share & Export”. Look for a share button in the app you want to use.
Choose “Print”.
The built-in Android print dialog appears. You can print to a printer connected to the same Wi-Fi network or “Save as PDF” and transfer the PDF file to a computer connected to a printer.
You can also customize the paper size, color, and orientation by expanding the menu.
Tap the printer icon or the PDF button when you’re done!
This certainly isn’t the most elegant solution, but if you just need a quick and messy way to get text messages onto a piece of paper, it will do the trick.
How to print an Android text message transcript
If printing screenshots isn’t a viable option, there are also apps that can create transcripts for printing. However, this may not be an accepted method if you need a call recording for legal purposes. (Disclaimer: We are not attorneys and recommend that legal matters be consulted with an attorney.)
We use an app called “SMS Backup & Restore”. It’s a free app with over 10 million downloads and a 4-star rating. Open the app and give it permission to access your call logs, contacts and SMS messages.
Next we need to create a backup of your text messages. This creates the transcript that we can print out. Tap the “Set up backup” button.
Make sure Messages is selected, then tap Advanced Options.
In the advanced options, select “Only selected conversations” and tap “Change” to choose specific conversations to backup. You may also want to turn on Attachments and Media here.
Tap Next at the bottom of the screen to continue.
Choose where you want to save the backup and tap Next again.
Uncheck “Schedule recurring backups” and tap “Back up now”.
After the backup is complete, open the hamburger menu button on the top left and select View Backups.
Open the backup you just created.
Tap the three-dot menu icon for the conversation you want to print.
Finally, select “Print Conversation” from the menu.
The built-in Android print dialog will appear and you’ll see a preview of the conversation in a spreadsheet format. You can print to a printer connected to the same Wi-Fi network or “Save as PDF” and transfer the PDF file to a computer connected to a printer.
You can also customize the paper size, color, and orientation by expanding the menu.
Tap the printer icon or the PDF button when you’re done!
This method has a much cleaner result, but also seems easier to work with if you have to take that into account.
Unfortunately, there really isn’t an easy built-in way to print text messages. However, it’s oddly easier to transfer text messages from an iPhone to an Android device. If you need to retrieve deleted text messages on your Android device, there are options for that as well.
