# Chat history

> Retrieve and manage chat message history.

> **Note:**
>
> This feature is currently only available in the Core SDK and Unity SDK 16.

Chat history allows for the archiving and client-side retrieval of text conversations between users. Users can look up specific conversations or view previously sent messages by all users in a conversation.

> **Note:**
>
> Messages from blocked participants are not returned in chat history search results. A history request can come back empty if all messages in the request were from a blocked participant. In this case, the response contains a cursor indicating that there are more messages in the channel. The max argument for chat history will show fewer messages than the number requested if there is a message from a blocked user in the channel. Use the cursor value in the subsequent request to retrieve the next page of messages.

Chat history has a storage period of 7 days. If [Text Evidence Management](./text-evidence-management) is enabled in a project, the storage period is extended to 30 days.

| Topic                                                                                    | Description                                                                    |
| ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| [Retrieve account-wide chat history](./retrieve-account-chat-history)                    | How to retrieve account-wide chat history of a user.                           |
| [Retrieve channel-based chat history](./retrieve-channel-chat-history)                   | How to retrieve channel chat history.                                          |
| [Chat history query with blocked participants](./chat-history-query-blocked-participant) | Information on how Chat history behaves when blocked participants are present. |
| [Get last read message information from a given channel](./get-last-read-message-info)   | How to retrieve message read information.                                      |