How do I get rid of saved messages on iOS7?

I too was having this issue, at first. However, I then decided to try the old trick of genuine patience. It worked. It takes a bit. But after deleting everything and just waiting it eventually deleted everything. It took about 20 min or so for 2gb. Then once i waited and it was all finished I was able to restart my phone without the messages coming back. So in think by the one person syncing to iTunes/iCloud each time was just the time it took to actually delete the messages.

I think apple could maybe build a status bar for this or work to improve the process of the data removal.

So give it a go and just wait.

I have deleted all the messages out of the iMessage app, reset my phone (I have the 5s) and backed up to itunes. None of these actions worked to delete the 2 gigs of saved iMessages that are listed in settings>general>usuage (storage). I did not set this iphone up as a new iphone.

I did your Method 1, and I know that it deleted what I needed it to because it shows messages taking up 4 GB on my phone, and in Ibackupbot, I deleted 4 GB; however, when I try to restore my backup through iTunes, it days I can't because there isn't enough space on my phone? What am I doing wrong?

Update: I had to delete videos that were part of the backup, but it still said I didn't have enough space (even though I did). So, I restored I factory settings and then restored my backup...once directly through iTunes, and a different time through iBackupBot, and both times still left me with the messages taking up space. Help! I swear I feel like this is a way to make people buy a new phone with even more space.

SOLUTION: Does not require Factory Reset of Phone OR Sync with itunes.

I upgraded to 7.0.3

Open a message

Touch and hold a text entry within that message until you see 'Copy | More...' appear

Tap 'More...'

Tap 'Delete All'

Tap 'Delete Conversation'

<Insert hallelujah chorus>

The Content of the conversation will be deleted and space will be freed up.

Found a solution:

Does not require Factory Reset of Phone OR Sync with itunes.

I upgraded to 7.0.3

Open a message

Touch and hold a text entry within that message until you see 'Copy | More...' appear

Tap 'More...'

Tap 'Delete All'

Tap 'Delete Conversation'

You can also at this point delete the conversation within iMessage

After months of searching for a solution, i tried method 1 posted in this board earlier, after a few kinks and re-tries it worked! I had 9.1 GB of docs and data that no matter how many messages i deleted this number would not go down. Until now!! so happy it's fixed.

I had to do a few back ups to itunes because the system kept restarting but good thing i did.

after following all steps, my phone wouldn't restore from the latest back up, it kept giving me an error message so i had to restore from a slightly older back up and it worked great.

Its the first time I see over 10GB available in my 16GB phone and can actually use the icloud back up again! I seriously was about to give up but had to be very patient with the steps.

Thanks!

This is the answer!!!! No Downloads, and no Reset!

It was so frustrating to find I had 9.8g of Messages (saved) on my phone but finally found the solution.

Here are the steps:

1. - Delete all the text conversations you want to get rid of by swiping and deleting entire conversations.

2. - wait

3. - keep waiting

4. - be patient

5. enjoy your free space 🙂

Mine had 9.8 and so it took my phone overnight to delete and also got wonky and didn't let me text or recieve texts for a moment of time but eventually deleted everything. I backed up before just in case and backed up twice during the purge but it worked. If you restored at intervals with the same backup you would see the devilish documents+data bar slowly diminish.

It stinks that it takes that long but it does eventually work. If you restore and old back up beware because it will restore all the previous messages. I checked this by backing up every few hours just to know it was working. At the end of the process I backed up everything and then restored with that same back up and finally those messages (saved) were gone. THANK THE LORD!!!

This worked for me! For years I have had this issue and my storage was full all of the time I was deleting photos and messages - amazing how many mms photos were in the file and that apple doesn't have a better way of dealing with these. All showed deleted on my phone yet were still in this file area, I guess now I have to do this on a regular basis to stop it from happening again??

Thank you!

Try this if you have this issue follow the steps exactly it works oh and when you do your back up make sure it is not encrypted or it won't work!

I have already posted on several other apple forums as if your like me and have had an I phone 5 16gb and have over the past 13 months have been sending loads of pictures via text and email, when you go into settings/ general/ usage a large part of your memory is taken up in saved text messages ( I had about 3 gig) also in saved emails I had 2.5 gig both trapped in the I phone cache which you can't access.

I like most others have searched forums to find an answer to get the valued memory back I firstly found that most people found the Ibackupbot worked so I gave it ago however on the last step it kept saying that I didn't have enough space to restore my phone. The problem is that you need quite a few gig to restore your phone but when you only have 13 gig to play with when you first have your phone and then nearly 5 gig trapped it don't leave much space to play with so I found that the Ibackupbot didn't work for me as I believe that process works better with a 32 gig phone as you have loads more memory to play with.

After loads of digging I found these two techniques to get your trapped storage back.

Text cache

Before you start the process check how much memory is being used in usage on saved text messages I also synced my phone with I tunes ( not sure if it makes a difference).

1. Select Settings > General > Spotlight Search

2. Un-Check Messages in the Spotlight Search

3. Delete all text messages that show in the Messages app

4. Open the multi-tasking bar by double tapping on the Home button

5. Close ALL running applications

6. Restart your phone

Remember to reset your phone by holding the on/off button and the home button until you see the apple logo then go back in settings / general/ usage and see if the storage has reduced. ( every time I repeated the above process I noticed that a chunk of memory was given back to me it took me three times and I had freed all 3 gig.

On the third go I did delete all my current texts but a small price to pay to get 3 gig back.

To get email cache back

When I went into my sent emails even though I had deleted them all it said at the bottom there was 935 unread emails and in spot search you can still see my old emails I had sent months ago but you can't access them.

I have a hotmail account so this what I will use for my example. Basically make sure you uncheck mail and texts in spot search then delete you email account in settings/ mail.

Don't worry as all your emails you want to keep are still in the hotmail main server as your phone is only an access point to see your emails (for hotmail anyway) so reinstall your email on your phone in settings/ mail and you can upload your emails back from your inbox.

I now have 5.5 gig of space back an can install some of my apps and not worry about taking pics and videos

I hope this helps let me know if you get stuck

Cheers kurt

Ugh these things are working for everyone but me! I've tried these options and This number just keps getting larger! there was supposed to be an update that was supposed to fix it on Dec. 24th and still nothing.😕

After much searching on the web and reading many (sometimes amusing) posts on this topic here is what I have found.

In Settings>General>Usage my saved mesages were using 3.2Gb and no apparently immediate way of deleting them.

However as the good book says "seek and ye shall find".

SO this is where I went:

Settings>iCloud>Account> then scroll down to ADVANCED and select Mail; again scroll down to the bottom and select Advanced and yet again scroll to the bottom (well at least to DELETED MESSAGES) and tap on the line called Remove.

Here at last you will find a setting that enables you to select the period after which iOS will remove your deleted messages.

The shortest period is one day so you will haev to wait 24 hours to finally have that memory back but it should work and is a nice feature in iOS although it is well burried!!