Q: how to recover and permanently delete iMessages

Restore Deleted iMessages on Mac

You can only restore the whole iMessage database, not individual conversations or messages. You need to replace the current database with an earlier version. so you will  lose all later changes.

1. Sign out all iMessage accounts and quit Messages.
2. Press and hold down the option key and  choose Go -> Library from the Finder menu bar.
3. A folder window will open.
4. Restore the “Messages” subfolder named from a backup told backup which contain deleted iMessage contact.
5. Then log out and log back in.

Delete Chat History iMessages on Mac

Make sure your iMessage and all other messaging apps are closed.

Launch Finder in your Mac and press CMD+Shift+G. You will get a go to Windows in front of you.

Enter ~/Library/Messages/ in the dialog box.’

You will see a lot of files which weird extensions. Don’t worry. These are the files in which all your iMessgaes are saved in hash forms. We will use these files to clear off the history of iMessage.

Move the chat files to the trash. Delete the chat.db, chat.db.shm, chat.db.wal files from this folder at once, or you can delete them one by one.

Now clean up the trash in order to delete the iMessage history permanently.

This would delete all the iMessages from the past. But note one thing here: your attachment files like videos, photos, scans and everything that was sent to you in iMessages via attachments will not be deleted from this process because attachment files are not here. To delete the attachment files, follow these steps.

Launch Finder from your Mac.

Type Command+Shift+G and enter ~/Library/Messages/Attachments/

You can now delete all the attachment files from the folder you will see next and clean up the trash to delete them permanently.

Good luck