How do I delete saved text messages that are taking up storage on my iphone?

Kurty999's method works on my iPhone6 (IOS 8.1). I was able to purge over 3.4GB of data out of the "messages" section.

First, i manually deleted all my text messages by swiping and deleting. After this was done my usage was reporting 3.4GB under messages.

Next i did the steps he outlined:

How to fix it:

1. 1. Select Settings > General > Spotlight Search
2. 2. Un-Check Messages in the Spotlight Search
3. 3. Delete all text messages that show in the Messages app
4. 4. Open the multi-tasking bar by double tapping on the Home button
5. 5. Close ALL running applications
6. 6. Restart your phone

Only after that was done did my usage report "messages" as 63 Mb (which i can live with).

Definitely which that Apple's IOS could manage this part of storage more efficiently.

I had to erase all contents and settings on my phone, and THEN do restore from backup via iTunes done via method 1. All the space being taken up by "saved messages" (5.4 GB) was wiped clean. But without erasing the phone, it would not let me do the backup, because I didn't have enough space. Pain to do it this way, am hoping that this doesn't fill up again and I have to redo the whole thing.

Had the same issue but was solved by deleting conversations that used iMessages that were somewhat long and with pictures in it. After deleting just did a normal restart and the taken space was significantly lowered. The thing is that iMessages take up a lot more space than a normal sms and is stored on the iphone. If you dont want space used up just disable iMessages and it should stop storing messages.

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

Hey buddy just so I can help a couple of people did you do exactly what I wrote above your post or did you look at the other forum that I've been trying to help people on?

Also can you let me know if you did anything extra that I havnt mentioned as some people can't get it to work.

Cheers Illogik

This is a very late response as i just looked into it, if any one sees it it will be great. Well the problem is that messages were still get archived and so the attachments you were sent through sms or imessage. Now that the jailbreak is out, i was scrolling around in my phone through ssh. I was also wondering why theres 2.2GB of saved messages when i had deleted all my messsages? So i found the path to the sms folder though ssh ( lucky guess lol ) And then i deleted the attachments that were archived from years back and old drafts that had no point because they were old. So here is the fix. First have a jailbroken iPhone. SSH into, if you dont know how, youtube it. Go to Private/Var/Mobile/Library/SMS . Here you can go inside the Attachments folder and delete everything inside. Do the same for the Drafts. LEAVE THE REST ALONE. Go to your settings and watch your regain your GB's. Hope it helps !

Neither Nickc25's (not enough space to restore) OR Kurty999's (nothing at all happened) worked for me.

This is so frustrating. 5.3 GB of space totally wasted. 2 hours wasted on trying to sort this out.

Apple really needs to fix this. This is ridiculous.

Tasha not sure if you're had a look at the link I posted above and read page 7-8 this is the main thread about this problem.

To complete Nic's way mate you need to have 3-4 gig of space to complete a restore from iTunes remember the stuff you delete such as apps and photos will come back on the restore just not the saved text data.

Note that if you delete an app and then restore it you may loose data like progress on a game.

Also if I was you just copy all your pics and vids onto a computer just in case.

Once you have deleted enough space then restore in iTunes should work mate.

( just look on the other forum as I took pictures step by step of the ibot back up process to make sure your happy before you make the restore)

Cheers Kurt hope you get it sorted took me hours to

Thank you ! I've been spending hours trying to get rid of these old sms back ups, using iBackupBot seems to be very helpful ! : I could delete oldies from 3 years ago stuck in my Iphone and using up storage for nothing,

I'm restoring now once again, fingers crossed ..

(http://www.icopybot.com/itunes-backup-manager.htm)

Nickc25, Thanks bud. Method 1 worked for me and was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I even got to browse through my old text images and saw what was in their using iBackupbot. Apple should provide a tool like this free to iphone users. It was very slick.

From what I could tell, all the orphaned text images or "saved" as the iphone calls them were from pre-ios7 install. Must have been some glitch between syncs, icloud, and installs that left the old cached files out there.

No other method on these forums did the trick and I tried them ALL, including the ones that suggest doing this and that and syncing and restarting several times.

Thanks for you post, I got so much space back on my phone and my wife's.

I tried the spotlight search method which did help free up some space however prior to trying that I had already manually deleted messages and I now need to get rid of those. Do I need to try the other two techniques mentioned earlier in this discussion

Thanks

I tried the whole 'delete the messages, then close down all running apps, then restarting phone' and ti cleared up some space but eventually I had to do a backup to my mac, then run ibackupbot and delete all the messages there, then reset my iphone to factory, then restore my phone from my backup on my mac. And all my space was freed up again =) it wasnt bad. Just make sure to do a back up first. Thats all, then you get all your apps and everything back except those deleted messages

ok so i am not sure if this is a permanent solution or not, but i found an app called PhoneClean... you can find a product key for free on youtube... it cleaned up 8gb on my phone i had 9 taken up by bs.... please let me know if this works for anyone else!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCPKeCR0CTo

http://www.imobie.com/phoneclean/

Ok, I Just figured it out. YOU HAVE TO DELETE MESSAGES FROM IMESSAGE ON YOUR COMPUTER. I just deleted all the messages off my computer, as well as iphone and ipad. Then synced it. I just cleaned up 6.7 GB!!! Hope this helps 🙂

When iTunes says there's not enough room to backup it's referring to your computer not your iPhone.

Free up space on your computer hard drive to allow for the backup.

Do this if you're on Windows:

1. Open my computer

2. In the box at the top type %appdata%

3. Open the "Apple Computer" folder

4. Open the "Mobile Sync" folder

5. Open the "Backup" folder

6. Delete any old backups you don't need.

That should free up space because old backups take up a lot of space on the computer. I would only keep the most recent backup at any given time.

Good luck