# DiscordChatExporter DiscordChatExporter (DCE) is the tool that gets your messages out of [[Discord]]. Direct messages, group chats, server channels, threads. It writes them to HTML, TXT, CSV, or JSON, with the markdown, attachments, embeds, and emoji preserved. Built by Oleksii Holub (Tyrrrz), MIT licensed, roughly 12k stars. ## Why it matters [[Discord]] has quietly become the archive of an enormous amount of community knowledge. Open-source projects, AI labs, indie SaaS, learning groups. Years of real answers to real questions, all of it sitting behind infinite scroll. None of it is yours. There's no meaningful export, no offline access, and the CDN links behind every attachment are signed and expire. Search is bad enough that finding a conversation from eight months ago is closer to archaeology than retrieval. The day a server goes quiet, gets deleted, or you get removed from it, all of that is simply gone. DCE is the answer to that. Point it at a channel, get a file you own. ## Features - **Every format that matters**: HTML (dark and light themes), TXT, CSV, JSON. The HTML export is self-contained and readable offline - **Faithful rendering**: markdown, attachments, embeds, reactions, custom emoji, replies - **GUI and CLI**: the GUI runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux; the CLI ships as standalone binaries and as a [[Docker]] image - **Filtering**: date ranges, message filters, and file partitioning for channels too big for one file - **Scriptable**: the CLI is the piece worth building on. It's what my own [[Discord Sync CLI]] drives under the hood ## Installation ``` docker pull tyrrrz/discordchatexporter ``` Also available through WinGet, Scoop, the AUR, and Nix, plus direct binaries from the GitHub releases page. ## The token warning DCE authenticates with either a bot token or a user token, and the difference is not cosmetic. **Automating a user account violates Discord's Terms of Service and can get the account terminated.** The project says so directly in its own README. Use a bot token wherever the server lets you. If you only have a user token, understand exactly what you're risking before you run anything at scale. ## License MIT. ## References - Repository: https://github.com/Tyrrrz/DiscordChatExporter - Docker image: https://hub.docker.com/r/tyrrrz/discordchatexporter - Documentation: https://github.com/Tyrrrz/DiscordChatExporter/tree/master/docs ## Related - [[Discord]] - [[DiscordChatExporter Frontend]] - [[Discord Sync CLI]] - [[Docker]] - [[Open Source]] - [[Self-hosting]]