Keeping Text Messages forever

I have the setting in my iPhone to keep messages forever. But they’re only being kept a year or so. Is there any way to retrieve older messages? It’s very important.

Hi, Not sure if you have the same issue as I did Kate, but this solved for me;

The solution that worked for me, at this point I had a full backup, was to navigate and select 'Reset All Settings':

Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Reset > Reset All Settings

After performing the reset, it took a few moments and the message thread history started loading.

Quick Tips:

1. You are able to tap and hold the scroll location indicator, then drag it. Hold it up to keep loading history.
2. You are able to tap the time indicator, the clock i.e 15:55, to quick jump to the top of the currently loaded history.

Moderators: I am sorry for my poor spelling of Disappearing!

Full Post > iPhone Messages Disappearing, but 'Keep Messages Forever' enabled.

This is strange. I use the same setting and I have messages back from 2020.

I do prune manually the messages I don't want to retain so my message list is not that long. Another thing is that I do not synchronize Messages over iCloud. Could these be some reasons ? I don't know.

As to the message that have been deleted, they could still be in the "Recently Deleted" folder if you use a recent version of iOS. In Messages, tap Edit (top left) and select "Show Recently Deleted". From there you could be able to recover these messages.

Hello castan3da,

On your iPhone, go to Settings > Messages and set "Keep Messages" to Forever.

My messages are set to last for ever

however I went back to review a message four months ago and cannot find it