Facebook data viewer
Open the file from Facebook’s Download your information — the ZIP files, the unzipped folder, or the JSON files inside — online, in this browser tab: your posts, comments, reactions, friends, Messenger chats and searches become tables you can search and download as CSV. Free, no account; the file is never uploaded.
Drop your Facebook export here — the ZIP files as you downloaded them (JSON format), the unzipped folder, or the .json files inside — or
Nothing is uploaded: the file is read by JavaScript in this browser tab and stays on your device. Photos and videos in the export are skipped; only the .json files are read. Several ZIP files can be dropped together. Drop them anywhere on the page.
How to view your Facebook data (JSON export)
- Request the file in Accounts Center (Facebook: “You may see either Accounts Center or Meta Account settings as the place to manage your account settings”): Settings & privacy → Settings → Meta Account / Accounts Center → Your information and permissions → Export your information (older versions say Download your information) → Create export, pick your profile, then Export to device. Facebook: “From here, you can choose specific info to export, select a date range, format, the notification email and media quality.” Choose JSON as the format, then Start export (Facebook Help, Export a copy of your Facebook information).
- Wait for the notification. Facebook: “When your export is ready, you’ll have 4 days to export your information in the Available downloads section in the Export your information tool.” A large export comes as several ZIP files.
- Drop the downloaded ZIP (or all of them at once) on this page, or click Choose file. If you have already unzipped it, click Choose folder or drop the folder: the viewer reads the .json files and skips the photos and videos.
- Every list in the export gets a tab: click one, type in Find in this list to filter it, click a column header to sort, and click Download CSV or Copy for Excel / Sheets. The Summary tab has the charts, counts and dates.
What is in a Facebook data export
Facebook lets you choose “specific info to export” or everything, and the JSON export is a ZIP of folders — your_facebook_activity (posts, comments_and_reactions, messages, groups, events, saved_items_and_collections and more), connections, personal_information, logged_information, security_and_login_information, ads_information, apps_and_websites_off_of_facebook — with one .json file per list and folders of media. The viewer does not assume a fixed layout: it opens every .json file, finds every list of records in it and shows each one as its own tab, named after the file (your_posts__check_ins__photos_and_videos_1.json becomes “Your posts, check ins, photos and videos”; a list split over several numbered files is joined into one tab). In exports we have tested this covers posts, comments, likes and reactions, friends, followers, friend requests, groups and group posts, events, pages you follow, saved items, searches, notifications, login and account activity, advertisers using your information, the profile fields and the Messenger chats — one tab per chat, named after the chat, with the sender, time and text of every message. Older exports with a different folder layout are read the same way.
Two things in the file need translation, and the viewer does both. Facebook writes times as Unix timestamps (seconds since 1970); the tables show them as dates and times in UTC, so they can differ from your local time by your time zone. And Facebook writes emoji and accented letters as escaped bytes (“é” for é), which look broken in a text editor; the viewer decodes them, so names, posts and messages read as they were typed. Photos and videos are in the export as files: the tables show their paths and captions, and the viewer never fetches anything from Facebook.
Is my Facebook data uploaded?
No. The file is opened and read by JavaScript in your browser; there is no server that receives it, nothing is stored, and the page sets no cookies. A ZIP is unpacked in the browser too, using the browser’s own decompression, and only its .json entries are read — the media files inside stay untouched. You can check this yourself: open your browser’s developer tools on the Network tab, drop a file, and watch that no request carries it. The site’s host, GitHub Pages, logs the IP address of every visitor for security, like any web server — details on the privacy page. Because the file stays with you, the viewer works on a phone as well as on a laptop, and keeps working offline once the page has loaded.
Summary tab: counts, dates and busiest hours
The Summary tab draws two small charts for the largest dated list (often your likes and reactions, or the messages of your busiest chat) — records by hour of the day and by weekday, in UTC as the timestamps in the file — and below them lists every section with its number of records and its first and last date. It is an overview you can screenshot — but the point of the page is the lists themselves: every post with its date and text, the comments you wrote, the searches you made, the friends list with the date each friendship began, each chat you can search by word, all exportable as CSV that opens in Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers.
JSON, not HTML: which format to request
When you request the export, Facebook offers two formats. HTML, in Facebook’s words, is a ZIP “containing an HTML file named index that you can open in a web browser” — readable, but with no tables to search or export, and this viewer does not read it. JSON is “a machine readable format of your information”: one .json file per list, which is what this page turns into tables. If you already have an HTML export, request it again and choose JSON; Facebook says “you can always request a new one”. Media quality only changes the size of the download — “if you choose a higher quality version of your media, your download will be larger” — since the viewer ignores the photos and videos anyway.
Facts checked on 25 September 2026 against Facebook’s help page “Export a copy of your Facebook information”: facebook.com/help/212802592074644; see also “Access and download your information”, facebook.com/help/1701730696756992. The layout of the JSON export is described from files we have tested; Meta changes folder and field names over time, which is why the viewer reads whatever lists it finds. DataExportViewer is an independent tool, not affiliated with Facebook or Meta.
FAQ
How do I download my Facebook data?
On Facebook: Settings & privacy → Settings → Meta Account (or Accounts Center) → Your information and permissions → Export your information (or Download your information) → Create export → choose your profile → Export to device → choose the information, a date range, the format (pick JSON) and media quality → Start export. Facebook says that “when your export is ready, you’ll have 4 days to export your information in the Available downloads section”, and that the request “will expire after a few days, and you can always request a new one”. Then drop the ZIP files on this page.
HTML or JSON — which format should I choose for the Facebook download?
JSON. Facebook calls it “a machine readable format of your information”: one .json file per list, which this viewer turns into searchable tables with CSV export. The HTML format is a ZIP with an index page that opens in a browser by itself; there is nothing to search or export in it, and this page does not read it. If you already have an HTML export, request the download again with JSON selected.
Is my Facebook data uploaded to a server?
No. The ZIP or .json files are read by JavaScript in your browser; no server receives them, nothing is stored, and the page sets no cookies. To check, open your browser’s developer tools on the Network tab while you drop the file: no request carries it. The host, GitHub Pages, logs visitor IP addresses for security — see the privacy page.
Can I see my Messenger messages in the export?
Yes, if you included messages when you requested the export. They are in the messages folder, one subfolder per chat with a message_1.json (and message_2.json and so on for long chats). The viewer shows one tab per chat, named after the chat, with the sender, time and text of every message and the paths of any photos sent, and joins the numbered parts into one list; you can search a chat by word and download it as CSV.
Why are the times different from what I saw on Facebook?
Facebook writes every time in the export as a Unix timestamp — a number of seconds since 1 January 1970, with no time zone. The viewer converts those numbers to dates and times in UTC, so they can be a few hours off from your local time; the difference is exactly your time zone offset. The Summary charts by hour and weekday use the same UTC times.
Emoji and accented letters look broken in the file — why are they fine here?
Facebook’s JSON writes non-English letters and emoji as escaped bytes, one escape per byte, so “café” appears as “café” in a text editor and an emoji as four escapes. The viewer puts the bytes back together, so names, posts and messages read as typed. Nothing else in the text is changed.
Where are my photos and videos?
They are in the export as image and video files, in the media folders next to the .json files. This page shows lists, not pictures: a post’s row gives the date, text, caption and the path of each attached file inside the ZIP, and you can open the files themselves from the unzipped folder. To make the download smaller, request the export without media or with lower media quality — the lists are the same.
The download came as several ZIP files — which one do I open?
All of them, together: select them all in Choose file or drop them on the page at once. The viewer reads every ZIP, joins lists that are split across them (numbered files like your_posts_1.json and your_posts_2.json) and shows one set of tabs. If a ZIP is larger than 4 GB the ZIP64 format is not supported in the browser: unzip it and drop the folder instead.
How do I find everything from one year, or one person?
Type in Find in this list: it filters the current tab as you type, across all columns, and the status line says how many records match. Dates are shown as “2019-03-14 …”, so typing “2019-” keeps only that year, and typing a name keeps only the rows that mention it. Click a column header to sort by that column (click again to reverse); numbers sort as numbers, dates as written. Download CSV then exports the rows as you see them — only the matching ones, in the sorted order.