Remove Timestamps from Chat & Message Exports

Chat exports from apps like WhatsApp, iMessage, and most SMS-backup tools timestamp every single line, not just the occasional cue the way a subtitle file does. A typical exported line looks like [1/5/24, 9:14:02 AM] Alex: Morning! Are we still on for the 10am sync? or 1/5/24, 9:14 AM - Alex: Morning!, depending on the platform and export method. That's useful metadata while you're searching for when something was said, but it's pure clutter if you're trying to read the conversation as a document, paste it into a report, or feed it to a summarizer.

This tool is built specifically for that inline format: a timestamp sitting at the very start of a line, in brackets, in parentheses, or followed by a dash, optionally preceded by a date. That's a different shape than an SRT or WebVTT subtitle cue, which carries its timecode on its own dedicated line. If you're working with an actual caption file instead of a chat log, the dedicated Remove Timestamps tool is the better fit.

Step-by-step instructions

• Export your conversation as a plain-text file (WhatsApp: Chat → More → Export Chat → Without Media), or copy the conversation text directly.
• Drop the .txt file onto the box above, or paste the text into the left pane.
• Leave Strip sender names off to keep each person's name, or turn it on for message text alone.
• Turn on Collapse blank lines if your export has a lot of empty lines between messages and you'd rather have a tighter block of text.
• Press Copy or Download to grab the cleaned .txt file.

Before and after

Before:
[1/5/24, 9:14:02 AM] Alex: Morning! Are we still on for the 10am sync?
[1/5/24, 9:14:40 AM] Jordan: Yep, I'll send the agenda in a minute.

After (sender names kept):
Alex: Morning! Are we still on for the 10am sync?
Jordan: Yep, I'll send the agenda in a minute.

After (sender names stripped too):
Morning! Are we still on for the 10am sync?
Yep, I'll send the agenda in a minute.

Formats this tool recognizes

Bracketed, parenthetical, and dash-separated inline timestamps are all detected automatically, in both 12-hour and 24-hour clock formats, covering the large majority of WhatsApp, iMessage, and SMS exports.

What this tool intentionally doesn't do

It only touches timestamps at the very start of a line, so a time mentioned mid-sentence (someone typing "let's meet at 3pm") is left alone. Group-chat formats that put the sender's name and time on a separate header line above the message, instead of inline, aren't supported yet.

Common reasons to strip message timestamps

• Sharing a conversation: pasting a WhatsApp or iMessage thread into a document, email, or support ticket reads far more naturally without a timestamp on every line.
• Research and qualitative analysis: researchers coding chat transcripts for themes usually want clean dialogue, not interleaved metadata.
• Feeding an AI summarizer: language models produce better summaries from plain conversational text than from a log cluttered with repeated date/time stamps.
• Redacting before sharing: removing exact timestamps (and optionally names) is a quick first step before sharing a chat log more broadly, alongside any other redaction it needs.
• Archiving as readable text: a cleaned log is easier to skim, search, and store than the raw export.

Still 100% client-side

As with every tool on SubToolDesk, the file never leaves your browser. Chat logs are often the most personal files people convert on this site, so this one runs on the same architecture as the subtitle tools: FileReader to read the file locally, plain JavaScript string processing to clean it, and no network request involved in the conversion itself.