Messages attachments taking up over 30GB, despite iCloud storage being turned on

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Messages attachments taking up over 30GB, despite iCloud storage being turned on

On my 2017 MacBook Pro 13", I have been running low on storage. I've deleted as much as I can, but one thing that remains is the space taken up by Messages—32.91GB. What confuses me is that all of my messages are stored in iCloud, so why is so much space being taken up on my mac? I am not running out of iCloud storage, and I have tried disabling/enabling iCloud storage in the Messages app with no success.

My two main questions:

Why are all of these attachments stored on my mac in the first place?

And if I delete them, what will happen to the attachments that are in iCloud?

I only have a 256GB ssd, and I desperately need the space to update XCode. Thank you in advance for your help!

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.5

Posted on Aug 14, 2021 9:11 AM

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Barney-15E

Level 10

112,956 points

Aug 16, 2021 3:16 PM in response to kaneiyad

What confuses me is that all of my messages are stored in iCloud,

iCloud is a synchronization service. Just because you have Enable Messages in iCloud doesn't make them exclusively available there. It makes them available on all devices regardless of which one collected it the first time. Just like everything iCloud, most things are stored locally and in the cloud. Some things are stored only in iCloud.

Like everything else synchronized with iCloud, if you delete them off one device, you delete them on all including iCloud.

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Messages attachments taking up over 30GB, despite iCloud storage being turned on

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