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

How do you "Delete all text messages that show in the Messages app?" One by one?

This way is super easy, you don't have to back up your phone, plug it in or anything. Just go to settings-->messages-->message history--> keep messages, and then select 30 days, and it'll delete all messages and message attatchments on your phone that are older than 30 days. I opened up 4 gigs of data this way, i HIGHLY recommend! And then you can change it to delete year old messages or never delete messages again, but you will still save so much storage

this is genius! thank you!

the simplest solution that actually works!

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!

cleared 3gi the 1st go and 1+gi the second 75mb 3rd no messages 🙂

Thank you so much!!! I was able to go from 6.1 GB to 1.3 GB in a matter of seconds! So happy!

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!!!!

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.

THANK YOU!!! It worked beautifully, and thank you for making the instructions so easy to follow!

I tried this and I didn't get a change. When I tried to run it again, the files I deleted are still gone. Not sure what to do at this point.