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

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!

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!

Maybe I'm just a pack rat but I have a big problem with deleting all my text messages. I have searched old text messages for information or to recall events, dates, etc and it has proven invaluable at times.

So is everyone here just bombing their whole text history? Or are they backing it up in a way that is accessible somewhere else (cloud, HD, computer, etc)?

I do have PhoneView which let's me store all texts in a PDF and print/export, but I haven't integrated that into my workflow yet so I got some work to do.

Kurty999, thanks for sharing Lucerova's solution. This worked for me. I had 2.8 GB of messages. I thought it would take forever to delete each thread individually, but it really only took about 25 minutes. I used that method of turning off spotlight search, deleting messages, closing all apps, then rebooting phone. Now messages only take up 286 MB and instead of having only 705 MB of free space available, I now have 3.2 GB of free space available. There was no need to go through the lengthy process of installing a new app, backing up, deleting, resetting phone, then restoring backup.

Before iOS 8.3 I NEVER searched internet for "how to do ... on iPhone ?". Now it's my third time when I cannot find a function to delete all messages on iPhone, that should be and was obvious in previous versions of iOS.

Steve Jobs is turning in his grave, Mac has been already pushed away from main stream when PC came in with open architecture, now history will repeat itself, Apple will loose clients because of iOS8.3, and Android will take the market. But this time Steve Jobs will not come back to rescue the company. Pitty.

Actually, all i did was change my message saving from Forever to 30 days and it made me go from 2.9 gigs of saved messages down to 1.8... no need to download apps, delete and reset my phone.. Simple fix!

My iPhone 4 can't be updated from iOS 7.1.2. The system don't "clean itself" after days? The amount of mb increases every time I receive a message... I never noticed this before. The "(saved)" messages. Even mail have some kb. I never used mail. lol

It's much easier to just:

Go to settings>messages>Keep messages.....change to 30 days...this will delete the old messages and attachments.....Then I changed it back to one year. I hope this helps.

TThat is wondershare. That's why your pulling up all that with the wrong time stand and dates ???!! it will date back to 1969 ? That has nothing to do with what has or hasn't been deleted. I can restore my phone and login wondershare and it will pull up whatever was saved to your pic from you phone being plugged in

Hello all!!

SO I had a customer that had the same issue. 7.9 GB of "saved" messages. However in the messages app there were only a handful of conversations. to resolve the issue we went

setting > Messages > Message history > and changed setting from forever to 30 days and cleared all the excess text data.

Thanks

CDUB🙂

Hey y'all - this solution really helped me! Deleted so much space off my phone instantly -- but you must be OK with deleting some of these messages! See below.. via idownloadblog.com

Messages, one of the most frequently used application in iOS, stores on your device text messages, iMessages and any media attached to them. Like most people, I message my friends and family quite a lot on any given day.

Needless to say, animated GIFs, pictures, videos and other media attached to messages can easily clog up your iPhone’s storage, which can be especially problematic on devices with just sixteen gigabytes of storage.

What most users don’t realise is that deleting a conversation doesn’t remove it immediately from the Messages database on your device.

Thankfully, iOS provides a setting for how long to keep messages on your device. This tutorial will teach you how to tell Messages to permanently delete your conversations after 30 days or one year.

How to set text messages to be kept for 30 days or 1 year

Step 1: Launch Settings on your iOS device.

Step 2: Tap on Messages.

Step 3: Now tap on the Keep Messages option under the Message History heading.

Step 4: Lastly, set for how long you would like to keep messages on your iPhone: 30 Days, 1 Year or Forever.

Step 5: Depending on your choice, you might be prompted to confirm it by tapping theDelete button.

If you set message expiration to 30 days, for example, you’ll be warned that all text messages and their attachments on your device that are older than 30 days will be permanently deleted.

Messages default to keeping your conversations on the device permanently.

RELATED: How to set how long Tap to Talk audio messages are kept on your iPhone

I’d recommend changing message expiration to 30 days if you exchange lots of media-rich messages with your friends and family and your iPhone is low on storage.

This will not delete all messages but any that are more than 30 days old. Go to Settings>Messages>Message History and if it's not selected, pick "30 Days". This will delete all messages older than 30 days.

Just noticed somebody already said this.

Deleting iPhone text messages ? nowadays , we are allowed to restore any deleted messages from iPhone at any time ,so it is difficult for us to delete iPhone anything , especially, you don't want the files will be back again ,if so that , the only way we can do is use erase tool to delete data from iPhone

Same problem here too. All of my messages are deleted but my storage lists 1.2 GB taken up from messages.

Just tried method 1 (I have 5.4 GB of saved messages) and it won't let me restore from backup because I don't have enough space. What should I do now??