Unable to bulk delete iMessage photos
iPhone 11 iOS 15.0.1
Messages is taking up a lot of space in my iCloud storage and I would like to delete a lot of unnecessary photos in my conversations to free up iCloud storage space.
This is what I'm doing:
- Open Messages.
- Open a conversation.
- Click the contact header.
- Under Photos click See All.
- Tap and hold any photo -> Delete -> Delete Attachment. The screen flickers and scrolls back to the top but the photo is still there. It didn't delete. If I select multiple photos and try to delete them, it works a bit but only like 10% of the photos I selected got deleted. What's going on? It takes me forever to select and delete hundreds of photos only to find out it didn't delete everything I had selected.
How am I supposed to delete my iMessage attachments en masse in order to free up iCloud stoage space? Am I doing something wrong?
I'm thinking maybe I have to disable messages in iCloud to force delete everything from iCloud but then I
am worried I might lose everything. I would do this if disabling messages in iCloud would make my phone download all messages and attachments from iCloud to my phone first, but I'm not sure if that's what will happen.
Another quirk: Open Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Messages > Other is using 500MB but if I open it I get a blank screen. What's that 500MB supposed to be? Videos and GIFs and Stickers is using a non-zero amount of storage but they're empty too when I open it.
I have 3 devices all linked to the same iCloud account: iPhone, iPad and Macbook. I'm not sure if that's an issue. I assumed if I delete an attachment from one device then it should delete from the others too.
On my Macbook I can try to bulk delete photos in a similar way, but it's more tedious and still doesn't really delete anything. Ditto my iPad.
