iOS 7 Messages (Saved) Can't Delete

This is all you need!!! - I just followed the instructions and it worked like a charm - 10-15 minutes of your time. EASY!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZyUCRU89YI - copy and paste that link

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!!

I would like to confirm that this works. If you back your phone up, then erase all content, then download the modified backup, it works. Your phone will come back with all that useless content deleted.

Kurtys way didnt work for me.

I used Nick C25's way of deleting the content and it worked great for me.

1. Now, make sure you backed up your phone.

2. Like others, i edited the back up and then tried to update that backup and it said i didnt have enough space. You have to go to settings and whipe all the content off.

3.Then, edit your backup as nickC25 said in his steps and upload the backup to your phone. This worked for me. ALL THE SAVED BACKUP ON YOUR PHONE IS BASICALLY ANY IMAGE YOU EVER OPENED OR SENT ON YOUR PHONE. I had over 6 gigs taken up and there was over 1200 images "saved" on my phone. You can pull all these off and put them in a folder on your computer. It is kinda fun, it was like a stroll down memory lane!

4. I would also like to comment on one thing. If you clean up your texts and messages weekly, THIS DOES NOT HELP. I clean my texts out once a week and still had all these images saved in my phone.

Easy. Go to messages, and find the conversation you'd like to delete. When you get it, swipe left to delete.

I have the same issue. I have 2.3gb in messages so deleted all my messages and deleted my email account (in case that counted towards messages). The memory used did go down by 0.2gb but my phone is still full, seemingly by nothing. I did a backup and restore after trying rebooting and still have the exact same memory used by messages. What else can I try apart from restoring to factory and starting my Apple journey all over again?

Tried the method listed above, used ibackupbot, deleted the media attachments. The (edited) backup always fails as it says it corrupted. I deparately need to release 4.9gigs that is being held up by saved imessge attachments. Someone plz help

Apple, this glitch badly needs to be addressed

thx in advance

I have the same or similar problem on a 4s upgraded to 7.03. Whenever I try to delete old text messages or threads, the Messages app gets slow and buggy. After deleting anything any thread I try to open takes a long time and will only list the very last message. The only way to fix it is to reset the phone. But then whatever I deleted just comes back.

I would follow Nickc25's steps, but I don't want to delete every attachment. I want to delete specific text threads. Is this possible? Thanks for any help.

I have went through these steps 3 times and the deleted attachments magically reappear again. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Any further suggestions? I even used the additional notes from riccardo39....

Hey Everyone, I have tried Nickc25's list of instructions to do get rid of all of my attachements the long way (with double backups and turning documents and data on and off). When I try to restore from backup it tells me I don't have enough space to backup so I can't complete this.

I am worried in using ibackupbot in deleting from the system files. I see the 8.3GB of attachements in the multimedia file manager. I see them in system files but when I click delete it warns me I may delete files that will cause my phone to not work. Can someone help me further so I don't screw my phone up AND am able to restore from backup?

Hi there

I managed to knock off 50mb from my usage of 1gb, but that's as far as I can get.

I've deleted all of my messages. I go into Spotlight settings where Messages is already unticked.

I close down all other apps. Turn off, then turn back on again.

Done this a total of 3 times. Last 2 attempts were ineffectual.

Am I doing something wrong?

Regards

Steve

I have the same exact problem. When I delete a message, the app gets glitchy and eventually freezes and opens to a white screen. When I restart my iPod, the app fixes itself for a little while. Then it does it again when I open an old conversation, or when multiple people message me at once. I have 1.7gb saved up, and I have mo idea how to fix this problem. Any luck for you?

Hi Double Canoe

Your message got me very excited, as it sounds like you've got it sussed. And you may well have.

But sadly not for my phone! Lol.

When I go to Settings>iCloud>Account, the only option under Advanced is Keychain, and that's a dead end. No settings to permanently remove deleted messages there, I'm afraid.

Perhaps it's due to the country I live in (England), where certain settings aren't available.

If so, I will blame our government.....they mess up everything else, lol

Best regards

Steve

I have same issue as Steve. Only thing under advanced is keychain. I need to get this done because I can't update to the new software unless I delete the 2GBs of messages which are "saved" somewhere in my phone. This is very frustrating!

Lisa