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

Nick, I know this response is extremely late compared to your response, but I used the first method with iBackUpBot and it worked. On my phone it shows that I freed up nearly 4 GB of space. Although when I connect to iTunes, it shows that the 4GB that I deleted was not deleted. Which is correct, my phone or my MacBook's iTunes?

This works. Thank you! These phones are ridiculously complicated. The only difference I did was to force a back up to the iCloud after deleting the messages then reboot. This allowed me to do the delete process only once.

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Basically, these devices are unmanageable unless you:

A. Own an Apple computer, and

B. You are proficient with it and iTunes (I hate iTunes)

I'm pretty sure that 90% of all iPhone users don't have Macs. There has to be a better way to do this, and it needs to be documented. Do the Apple techs peruse these posts at all?

Just to reiterate for those who may still be looking for this solution, your process works beautifully. The only thing I would add is to force an iCloud backup at your step number 6 before the reboot. This will tell iCloud the messages are deleted and prevent some from restoring from iCloud after the reboot. This allows the procedure to work fully the first time. You shouldn't have to repeat it several times. Cheers and again THANK YOU.

Maybe it does, but it's still ridiculously complicated for the average user, and unnecessarily so. Imagine a 90-year old trying to recover space on his phone. If they can't do it, your product/solution fails.

Personally I found the solution of closing all the apps, deleting the messages, and setting the phone down for 20 minutes so it could finish deleting stuff worked quite well. It still left a few hundred MB in messages, even though the app showed no threads... That is a product/OS flaw.

I think we are all agreed the procedure is tedious. On the other hand, had I inadvertently deleted a string of texts, it's comforting to know it could have been restored simply by rebooting. Not sure where the line is drawn between a restoration system and a tedious deletion procedure. It seems to make sense that a deletion of this magnitude should be followed by a new backup to confirm the deletion before it's final.

I went to Apple today with this very problem. I had to restore and set up as a new phone meaning I deleted ALL texts. I did not lose contacts or apps and it was a bit annoying to have to set up mail accounts again but I am glad I did it. I had almost 2gb of stored messages on a 16g phone.

Hey Nick,

I tried doing your second method but I keep getting the same message every time I try and restore my backup on iCloud (your 4th step) It says "iTunes could not restore because not enough free space is available on the iPhone." I have a 16gb phone and am using 13gb, so I'm not sure why I keep getting this message? Any help please would be great!

Thanks @Nickc25

I did this once & it did nothing. 4 hours later, having done this entire step 1 TWICE and after having to back up & totally re-set my phone, it finally worked! I have to say I was super worried about having to download a site from the internet in order to clear memory from my iPhone. Apple seriously needs to fix this. This was such a pain in the a** to go through! Thank you for your help!

I have spent two days deleting my texts! I several of the methods combined. I think what finally really worked was making sure my iPad and computer messages were deleted and OFF when I was deleting them from my phone. Then syncing, then rebooting. Each time it would only delete a portion of the data. After two days, it finally deleted them all. I'm not sure why apple hasn't come up with a simpler answer. Good luck to all of you. It's a huge pain!!

Go to Settings > Messages.

There's an option of how long to save messages. Check 30 days. An option will come up saying it will delete all messages that are older than 30 days. Click delete. Should free up space.

Kurty999 ..

THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!! I have been pulling my hair out for days trying to deal with 8.5 GB of deleted messages that wouldn't stay deleted!

After reading through all 182 messages in the other thread, I DID finally get it accomplished! It was the combination of several of the steps (including the miraculous free iBackupbot)! My message usage is now 25 MB, hahah! THANK YOU for the outrageous amount of time you have taken on these forums to answer a zillion questions that so many of us have been able to follow.

~marco67red

Okay, I bought the program WonderShare SafeEraser and it found all the deleted messages but when it tried to delete them it failed to delete, so I tried another approach.

THIS WORKS!

First, make sure you have an updated backup in Icloud and ITunes and then restore your Iphone as new from Itunes. Then restore Iphone from Icloud backup and when the photos are being loaded on the phone (at this time your Iphone will be working normally and you can see photos being loaded)take a look at the messages (saved) it should be very little. Watch closely and after the last photo is downloaded to your IPhone, you will notice the messages (saved) storage starting to increase. This is where you want to stop the restore process. Your Iphone will stop downloading the deleted messages and your phone storage will be back to normal. This is the last process in restoring your Iphone from Icloud. The phone will work as before, and you'll have all your storage back.

Now delete the Icloud backup and make a new one and that will solve your storage problem.

I verified this by restoring phone as new and then restored from the backup with no messages (saved) on it and the Iphone works perfect.

Hope this helps someone.

Your solution (method #1) Nickc25/Kurty999 was the winner. The KEY point was item #9: "Then just restore that backup using iTunes!"

I got my Messages (Saved) down to zero MB. I subsequently sent several text messages to myself with some photo attachments - approximately 20 MB's. After I went and deleted all of them in the Message App (ios 8), I went to General - Usage - Manage Storage and found that Messages (Saved) was 12 MB. Only a portion - 60% were removed. Why is my iPhone (5c) retaining a percentage of these messages in storage? I just wondered if anyone else has come across this issue, and if so, do you have a solution? Thanks!