Bulk Download Pictures from Messages So unbelievably I have never cleared my history in SMS/iMessages/Messages. Ostensibly, I should be able to scroll up and eventually see my first text message from my first gen iPhone. This is, unsurprisingly, taking up a considerable amount of space on my phone, but a big part of why I've never cleaned it out is that it contains a tremendous number of pictures of my daughters my wife has sent me over the years. It doesn't seem like these get saved to my photo roll and there doesn't appear to be any way to bulk export them. It may be worth noting that I use desktop messages in Yosemite and it seems work well, so there may be an approach I can use from that angle.

What's the best way for me to archive all the photo attachments from almost seven years of text messages?
I had this same issue and was able to resolve it by extracting the data from a backup. I used the script (accessible via link) to accomplish this. Note that a Mac would be required - Also note, I am in no way affiliated with the source or content, just a user in the past.


Run a phone backup via iTunes while connected to your computer
In Finder, go to the Go menu -> Go to Folder, enter in ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup
Locate the most recently modified folder in the Backup folder
Create a folder named iOSBackup folder on the desktop
Copy the folder you found in Backup to iOSBackup
Download iOSMessageExport (zip) which includes a set of perl scripts. Unzip the files into the iOSBackup folder. (You should see similar to the screenshot below)

Open Terminal
Enter cd ~/Desktop/iOSBackup and press Return
Enter perl backup.pl --directory_path &lt;folder&gt;/ and press Return. Replace  with the name of the backup folder inside of iOSBackup (will vary from backup to backup)

Once the script has finished running, go back to the iOSBackup folder and look for a folder named _export

Inside of _export you should see folders for each date a message was sent/received, images/movies are located in here. HTML files of each conversation (by day) are also available



Source: WonderHowTo