Discord

What you'll get

Before you start

1. On desktop: the cogwheel at the bottom left, then User Settings, then the Data & Privacy tab. It used to be called Privacy and Safety, so if you are hunting for that name you are following a guide older than the rename.
2. Scroll to Request your data and press Request Data. A window opens where you choose which categories to take.
3. Your account needs a verified email address before any of this works. An unverified account cannot request a package at all.
4. Do it on desktop if you can. Discord's own support pages contradict each other on whether the mobile app lets you pick categories or only offers everything, so the desktop path is the one that is documented.

How to download

1. Choose your categories. Messages is the big one, and it is also what pushes the wait towards the long end: a package with just Account and Activity comes back far quicker.
2. Confirm the request. There is no cancel afterwards, and you cannot start a second one until this one finishes.
3. Wait. Discord says up to 30 days. That is a legal ceiling rather than a typical time and most people get theirs in a few days, but it is not worth planning around the fast end.
4. The link arrives by email and stays good for 30 days from then. It goes to whatever address you had when you asked, so changing your email afterwards will not redirect it.
5. Download it before anything else. If you delete or disable the account before the link turns up, the request is cancelled and there is nothing to collect.

After the download

• The message folder is your own output and nothing more. Channel by channel, DM by DM, everything you wrote and not one thing that was written at you. A server you have been in for six years is not backed up by this.
• Attachments are links, not files. Every image and document you sent is a URL pointing at Discord's CDN. Anything you care about, download from the app itself, because Discord makes no promise about whether those links still resolve by the time you open the archive.
• Deleted messages are not in there, and Discord says so directly: a message you delete is no longer stored, so it cannot be handed to you later.
• Servers you had already left when you asked may not appear at all. Recently-departed ones can be included, and Discord does not say where that line sits.
• If you were not the owner of a server, your own moderation actions only go back 90 days. Older entries are simply absent.
• Support and Trust and Safety conversations are not in the message folder, because they happen outside the app. They are in a separate support tickets folder, matched on your email address.
• The account section is the more revealing half of the package: your email, phone number, IP addresses, active sessions, block list, friends, linked accounts, and your payment history. It also carries age signals, and if you are over 18 your birth date comes back anonymised rather than as a real date.
• No password, no 2FA secret and no backup code is in there. So this is not a route back into an account you have lost the keys to, and it is not a restore file either: an edited copy is not something Discord will accept.
• If you have lost access to the account entirely, Discord runs a separate process for that, at privacy@discord.com.
• Store the archive in ProtonDrive or pCloud for an off-site backup