The best way to save Seesaw photos with captions

The Seesaw export zip contains your child's photos and the teacher's captions, but they're separated. Photos are files; captions are buried in HTML code. To keep them together, the best approach is to move everything to Google Photos with the captions embedded as photo metadata.

What the Seesaw zip actually contains

When you download your Seesaw journal archive, you get a zip file organised by month. Inside each folder: photos, videos, and audio files, plus one HTML file per post containing the teacher's caption, date, and notes.

The captions are not embedded in the image files. They're in the HTML, which needs a browser to open. If you unzip the folder in Finder or File Explorer, you'll see long numeric filenames next to HTML files. Nothing is labelled, nothing is searchable.

It's a data export, not a photo album. That's the honest truth, and it matters for what you do next.

Why keeping captions matters

The teacher's captions are what turn a photo of a drawing into a memory of your kid's first week. They're also the hardest thing to reconstruct later. Once your child's Seesaw account is deleted (Seesaw is moving to an 18-month retention period for inactive accounts, per Seesaw's own documentation), there's no way to recover the captions from the photo files. They're gone.

The photos without captions are useful. The photos with captions are irreplaceable.

The options, and what each one keeps

Manual save (screenshots or one-by-one download)

Fast but lossy. Screenshots don't include captions. Even if you download photos individually from the Seesaw app, the teacher's notes don't travel with the image. You'll have the photos; you'll lose the words.

Keep the zip file

Safe but not accessible. The captions are all there, in the HTML files, but you can't easily read them alongside the photos. It's a backup, not a memory. Most families who do this never actually go back and look at the zip.

Little Archive

Upload the zip and your photos move to Google Photos with every caption embedded as EXIF metadata, the same field used for location and date information. The captions show up alongside the photos permanently, even if you later move the images somewhere else. You can understand more about how to preserve teacher captions and what the embedding process looks like before you start.

How to use Little Archive

Download your Seesaw journal archive (zip file)
Go to littlearchive.app and upload the zip
Preview a sample of your photos and confirm the captions are there
Pay once ($12.95 per journal)
Connect your Google Photos account via OAuth (requires a Google account)
Photos migrate with captions embedded, usually within 30 minutes

Note: some schools disable Family Access downloads. If the option doesn't appear in your Account Settings, a message to the teacher asking them to enable it is usually all it takes. Stuck on the download itself? Seesaw export not working — common fixes.

Save your Seesaw photos with captions

Upload the zip. Preview your photos. Pay once. Captions embedded permanently in Google Photos.

Save your Seesaw photos → $12.95 per journal · Preview before you pay

Common questions

Does the Seesaw export include the captions?: Yes, in HTML files, one per post. But they're not embedded in the image files. To keep captions and photos together in a format you'll actually use, you need to do something with the export.
Can I do this myself without Little Archive?: You can, but it requires writing a script to extract the HTML content and embed it as EXIF metadata in each image file. Little Archive automates exactly that. If you're comfortable writing Python, it's doable. If not, Little Archive handles it for $12.95 per journal.
What if I have photos from multiple years?: Each Seesaw class is a separate journal download. You can run Little Archive on each one. The price is $12.95 per journal.
What exactly does a child's journal contain?: A child's journal is built from posts tagged with their child's name, plus posts tagged "Everyone" (class-wide work). Posts tagged only to another student won't appear. Per Seesaw's help center, this is how the journal is scoped: not by class, but by what your child was tagged in.
When do I lose access to the photos?: Archiving a class doesn't close your download access. The real cutoff is account deletion. If you want to understand the full timeline, do Seesaw photos expire? explains the 18-month inactivity policy in detail.