ChatGPT Exporter (Safari Web Extension)

A Safari toolbar button that exports the ChatGPT conversation you're currently viewing as Markdown — the whole chat, with web-search citations turned into footnotes and an optional snapshot of its images and files.

It works by injecting a small function into the open chatgpt.com page, which calls ChatGPT's own /backend-api/conversation/{id} using the session you're already logged into (no tokens, no passwords, nothing leaves your machine).

How it works

1. The popup injects extension/exporter.js into the active tab via scripting.executeScript. Running in the page's origin, its fetch calls carry your ChatGPT session cookies.
2. It fetches the conversation, walks the active path (current_node → parent → root, reversed — the thread you actually see, not abandoned regenerations), and renders each user/assistant turn. Assistant text is already Markdown, so this is mostly stitching + dropping the 【…】 citation markers.
3. extension/popup.js stitches the turns into a single Markdown document — web-search citations appended as footnotes — and either saves it to ~/Downloads via the native handler or copies it to the clipboard.

Project layout

ChatGPTExporter/
├── extension/                 ← the Web Extension (edit these)
│   ├── manifest.json
│   ├── popup.html / popup.css / popup.js
│   ├── exporter.js            ← injected into the page; does the actual export
│   └── images/                ← generated icons
├── tools/make-icons.py        ← regenerates the placeholder icons (pure stdlib)
├── ChatGPT Exporter/          ← generated Xcode app wrapper (references ../extension)
│   └── ChatGPT Exporter.xcodeproj
└── README.md

The Xcode project references extension/ rather than copying it, so editing the JS/HTML and rebuilding picks up your changes — extension/ stays the single source of truth.

Build & install

1. Open ChatGPT Exporter/ChatGPT Exporter.xcodeproj in Xcode.

2. Signing is already configured — automatic style, team Z7L2YCUH45 (Drobnik KG), with consistent bundle ids (com.drobnik.chatgptexporter for the app, …​.Extension for the extension). Just confirm Xcode is signed into that Apple ID under Settings → Accounts so it can issue the development certificate.

   Forking? Select your team on all four build configs (Signing & Capabilities → Team) and swap the bundle ids for your own reverse-DNS — or build unsigned for a quick local test, the way CI does (CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO).

3. Run (⌘R). The container app launches — it's just a shell whose only job is to register the extension with Safari.

4. In Safari: Settings → Advanced → "Show features for web developers", then Settings → Developer → "Allow unsigned extensions" (fallback only — with the configured team this is unnecessary; the toggle resets each Safari relaunch).

5. Settings → Extensions → enable ChatGPT Exporter Extension, and when prompted grant it access to chatgpt.com ("Always Allow on chatgpt.com").

A 🟢 button appears in the toolbar.

The project builds and signs as-is (verified with xcodebuild — compiles, bundles, and passes embedded-binary validation). Signing with the configured team makes the extension stick permanently and skips the step-4 toggle.

Usage

1. Open the conversation in Safari (the account that owns the chat).

2. Click Download to write the whole chat as Title-YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM.md to your Downloads folder, or Copy to put the Markdown on the clipboard. The native handler writes the file directly — no download prompt, exact filename, UTF-8 (umlauts and emoji intact).

   No save-location picker exists for Safari extensions, so the file always lands in Downloads with the exact name.

Web-search citations always become footnotes: an inline [^n] where ChatGPT showed each source chip, plus a [^n]: [Title](url) block at the end (deduplicated by URL, anchored references only). Other ChatGPT annotations (::: blocks, hidden tokens) are stripped.

Download Files: tick "Download Files" and click Download — instead of a lone .md, you get a folder ~/Downloads/<Title>-<ts>/ with conversation.md plus a files/ folder of the conversation's images, attachments (PDFs, …), and code-interpreter–generated files (sandbox: links). Images are inlined as ![](files/…), other files as 📎 [name](files/…) links; the native handler fetches each one directly (no CORS) with a progress bar. Sandbox files are ephemeral on ChatGPT's side, so very old chats may no longer have them.

Raw JSON: hold ⌥ Option while clicking Download or Copy — both switch to the raw /backend-api/conversation response (…-raw.json), the full mapping tree with every content_type and metadata field. Handy for tuning the cleanup rules in extension/exporter.js (use tools/render-md.mjs to render one offline).

Limitations

• Images & attachments are _[image omitted]_ / omitted in a plain .md; tick Download Files to snapshot the thread into a folder with images and files (PDFs, …) fetched natively. The pointer/attachment parsing is defensive and may need tuning per ChatGPT's current shapes (use ⌥ Download JSON to inspect).
• The export always reflects the current active path — edited/regenerated branches are followed to the visible leaf; abandoned variants are dropped.
• macOS only, as generated. Re-run the converter with --ios-only/without --macos-only to add an iPad/iPhone target.
• Hosts are chatgpt.com and chat.openai.com. Add others in manifest.json → host_permissions if needed.

Regenerating

• Icons: python3 tools/make-icons.py
• Rebuild the Xcode wrapper from scratch (e.g. after changing app name/bundle id):

  xcrun safari-web-extension-converter extension \
    --project-location . --app-name "ChatGPT Exporter" \
    --bundle-identifier com.drobnik.chatgptexporter --swift --macos-only --force
  

  Regenerating resets signing: the converter writes the app id as com.drobnik.ChatGPT-Exporter (which no longer prefixes the extension id) and drops the team. Re-apply afterward — app id back to com.drobnik.chatgptexporter, and DEVELOPMENT_TEAM = Z7L2YCUH45 on all four target build configs.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.