People rarely think about export until it stops being possible. A feature gets discontinued, a model is replaced, or an app changes direction — and months of conversation become unreachable. The clearest example this year came from China, where ByteDance disabled custom AI agents on Doubao around 15 July 2026 and left users read-only access until 15 October 2026 to retrieve what they wanted to keep. Plenty of shutdowns come with far less notice. We covered the rules behind them in our report on China's AI companion regulation.
Deletion is a right. Export usually isn't a button.
Almost every companion app gives you a way to wipe a conversation or close an account, because that is the part regulators have pushed hardest on. Getting your data out in a usable form is a separate question, and it is where the category is weakest. A one-click "download my data" option exists in some apps and is missing in many others, so the honest first step is to look rather than assume.
Where a button is missing, the law may still help. Under the EU's GDPR, the right to data portability (Article 20) covers personal data you provided to a service and requires it in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Under California's CCPA, as amended by the CPRA, you can request the specific pieces of personal information a business holds about you, also in a portable form. Neither law forces an app to build a good export screen — but both give you a request you can make in writing, with a deadline attached.
The four things worth saving
"My data" is too vague to act on. Companion apps hold four distinct kinds of thing, and they behave very differently when you try to take them with you.
| What it is | Why it matters | How you usually get it |
|---|---|---|
| Chat transcript | The conversation itself — the part people are attached to | Built-in export if offered; otherwise a data access request, or manual copy |
| Character or persona definition | The description, traits, speech style and scenario that make the character | Usually visible in the character's edit screen, so it can be copied as text with no export feature at all |
| Stored memory / profile facts | What the app has concluded about you and reuses across sessions | Only if the app exposes a memory panel; otherwise internal and never visible |
| Generated media | Images, voice clips and other output you may have paid for | Saved to your device one file at a time — bulk download is rare |
The second row is the one people overlook and the most valuable. A transcript is a record; the character definition is a recipe. If you only have time to save one thing, save the recipe — our breakdown of what goes into a character card explains which fields carry the most weight.
How to get your data out, in order
- Search the settings for the word "data". Export, download, archive and privacy options are almost always grouped there rather than in the chat interface.
- Open each character's edit screen and copy the text. Name, description, personality, example dialogue, opening scene, and any lore notes — into a plain document you control.
- Check for a memory or profile panel and copy what it lists. This is also a privacy check — see our privacy checklist for the rest of it.
- File a data access request if the transcript matters and there is no export. Email the address in the privacy policy, name the law that applies to you, and ask specifically for conversation logs rather than "all my data".
- Save the media you generated, especially anything behind a paid tier.
- Store it outside the app — your own drive or cloud folder. Data left inside a service you are worried about is not backed up.
Do this while everything still works, not during a shutdown notice. Read-only windows are short and support queues get long exactly when everyone needs them.
What doesn't travel with you
Even a complete export does not let you move a companion to another app, and understanding why saves a lot of disappointment.
- There is no shared format. Companion apps do not agree on how memory or persona state is represented, so one app's export is just unstructured text to another.
- The model is half the character. Voice, pacing and refusal behaviour come from the underlying model and the app's own system prompt, neither of which is in your export. The same description elsewhere produces a recognisably different character.
- Derived memory stays behind. Summaries the app generated about you are its work product rather than text you submitted, which puts them on shakier ground for a portability request than your own messages.
- Volume works against you. Nothing usefully consumes a 400-page log, because context windows are finite — as our explainer on memory and continuity sets out.
What does work is deliberately unglamorous: write a 200-word summary of the character and the handful of facts that matter, and paste that into the new app as a description or profile. It reconstructs more of the feel than a raw transcript ever will.
Check this before you commit
Portability is easiest to judge before you have anything to lose, and it doubles as a quality signal.
- Is there an export option in settings — and what exactly does it include?
- Can you see and edit stored memories, or is that layer invisible?
- Does the privacy policy name a contact for access requests, and a response time?
- Does it say what happens to your history if the service is discontinued?
- Is the character definition editable, so you can copy it out at any time?
We weight these alongside memory quality and privacy in our guide to choosing an app, and our review methodology scores what apps claim against what they let you verify. To see the criteria applied, our MusePick review covers a character-first platform and our WhatCanIDoWith review a personalization-first one.
Related on CompanionRank
Privacy & Safety Checklist Memory & Continuity: Why Companions Forget Anatomy of a Character CardFrequently asked questions
Can I export my AI companion chat history?
Sometimes. A built-in export button is still the exception rather than the rule, so check the app's settings first. If there is nothing there, and you are covered by a data protection law such as the GDPR or the CCPA, you can ask the company directly for a copy of your data instead.
Will my exported chats work in a different companion app?
Not as a direct import. There is no shared format for memory or persona state between companion apps, so a transcript from one app is just text to another. What does transfer is a short summary you write yourself and paste in as a character or profile description.
What happens to my chat history if an app shuts down?
That depends entirely on the notice period the operator gives. When ByteDance disabled custom agents on Doubao in July 2026, it left users read-only access until 15 October 2026 to retrieve what they wanted to keep. Other services have closed features with far less warning, which is why exporting early is safer than exporting when you need to.