Key Takeaways
- Check how much space Messages is using up under Settings > General > Storage.
- You can set messages to automatically delete after 30 days or a year to stop Messages from taking up space.
- Better still, review and bulk delete large message attachments using storage settings.
If you send and receive a lot of text messages, the Messages app can take up a significant amount of space on your iPhone or iPad. Not only does it store your text message history, but it also keeps photo and video attachments. Here’s how to free up that space if you’re running low.
See How Much Space the Messages App is Using
You can check how much space the Messages app is using on your device from the Storage screen. To do that, head to Settings > General > iPhone Storage (or iPad Storage) and wait for everything to load (it may take around 20 seconds or so).
Next, scroll down the list and look for the Messages app. You’ll see how much storage space it’s using up. In my case, it’s taking up 1.25 GB.
If yours is also taking up a significant amount of space, read on to learn how to clear storage on your iPhone.
Automatically Delete Old Messages
To prevent messages from building up forever and taking up a larger and larger amount of storage space, you can set all messages to delete themselves after a certain period of time.
Bear in mind, though, that any messages that do get deleted will be gone forever. So if you want to keep a record of your messages or keep certain messages forever, you probably won’t want to have them deleted automatically.
To change this setting, head to Settings > Apps > Messages.
Scroll down and tap “Keep Messages” in the Message History section.
Choose an expiration period. By default, your iPhone or iPad will keep messages “Forever”, but you can choose to keep them for “30 Days” or “1 Year” if you prefer.
As for audio messages, your device will automatically delete them two minutes after you listen to them. This prevents them from taking up space forever even after you’re completely done with them.
To change this, though, you can go back to the main Messages screen in the settings and tap “Expire” under Audio Messages.
From there, you can choose to have them automatically deleted after two minutes or never have them deleted (unless you delete them manually).
Bulk Delete Photos, Videos, and Attachments
You might be familiar with one way to delete messages and attachments in the Messages app, which is by long-pressing on a message or photo, tapping “More”, selecting what you want to delete, and tapping the trash can. But this is the slowest way to do it since you’ll have to hunt through your conversations to find all those images that you want to delete.
You can also open a message, tap the profile picture or avatar icon of the contact at the top to view all the attachments in that conversation, and then delete any media you no longer need. However, this still isn’t the best way to go.
Instead, go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage (or iPad Storage), as you did before, and select the Messages app. From there, tap “Review Large Attachments.” This will provide a list of every single photo, video, and other attachment that the Messages app has saved from all of your conversation threads, and it’s in order by largest size first.
To delete one, simply just swipe to the left and hit the “Delete” button.
Unfortunately, there’s no “Select All” option or even a way to select multiple attachments and delete them in one swoop. However, this is still the best way to get rid of the largest attachments with minimal effort.
If you want to organize this list into specific media types, go back to the previous screen and check the “Documents” section below the “Review Large Attachments” section. You’ll see a list of the different kinds of media.
Tapping on one will only show attachments of that kind. So if you tap “Photos”, it will only show photos. You can proceed to remove them by swiping them to the right and tapping the “Delete” button.
If you want to save a photo or video before you delete it for good, you can tap it and then hit the “Share” button in the bottom-left corner.
From there, you can use AirDrop or a platform-agnostic wireless transfer method like LocalSend to send it to another device, send it in an email, save it to a cloud storage service, and more.
Delete Entire Conversation Threads
If Messages is using a lot of space, image attachments are likely to blame, so simply deleting text conversations may not help enough. However, if you have long conversations full of messages and attachments, they might take up quite a bit more space than you think. You can delete them and free up that space, assuming you don’t want to keep those conversations.
You can delete an entire conversation thread in the Messages app by swiping left on it and tapping the red trash bin icon.
In the popup that appears below, tap the “Delete” option. This will delete all messages in the thread, as well as all media attachments.
To bulk-delete multiple conversation threads at once, tap the three-dot icon in the top-right corner of the main Messages screen and select “Select Messages” in the menu.
Select the message you want to get rid of and then tap “Delete” in the bottom-right corner of the screen.
In the popup that appears at the bottom, tap “Delete” to remove those messages and free up space on your iPhone.
Enable the Messages in iCloud Option
You can save more space by enabling iCloud for the Messages app. This will upload your messages, along with their attachments, to iCloud and save only low-quality versions on your device. Any messages you receive from now on will be automatically synced to iCloud as well.
To get the most out of iCloud, ensure
you’re subscribed to iCloud+
to take get acces to additional storage space. That free 5 GB can fill up pretty fast once you start saving larger files.
To do that, head to Settings > [Your Name] > iCloud and tap “Messages” in the Saved to iCloud section.
If you don’t see the “Messages” option in the Saved to iCloud section, tap “See All” and select Messages in Cloud.
In the iCloud settings for messages, tap the “Use on this iPhone” toggle to enable Message in iCloud.
Text messages alone don’t really use up that much space. However, if you’ve racked up several years of photos and videos that you’ve sent and received, it’s likely that you’re in need of a messaging audit anyway. This, along with other tricks to save space on your iPhone, will prevent your storage from running out in the future.
