iOS 7 Deleting Messages

My son finally resorted to the "nuclear option" of restoring his 5s to factory settings and starting over. It works fine and Messaging performs as it should. He was able to save all his photos in iPhoto prior to this restore so he has them. He also found a neat app to export his contacts via an email which he did prior to the restore and then he was able to reimport them afterward. He lost all his old Messages but is able to look at them if he wishes by using one of those third party apps on his Mac that let you "look into" your iPhone iTunes backups.

i am having the same exact problem. not sure how to solve it, since i read every message of this thread & no one has a resolution. I never heard of deleting texts & then having to wait a few minutes for the app to go back to functioning properly. these phones are so expensive yet they don't even work properly. maybe apple should lower the prices or have everything in tip top shape. & i totally understood what you meant by "hard reset" - you hold the circle button & the top button down together. i'd love for a solution to this because it is extremely frustrating. but glad to know i'm not the only one with this problem.

Hi All,

I had the same problem for about 2 years. Finally found a solution that worked yesterday. It takes a long time, is tedious, and requires a lot of patience, but it works. Here's what to do:

1. Go to the oldest message thread you have and open it up.
2. Press and hold on a message and select "more".
3. In the top left corner select delete all.
4. Go back to the list of message threads (you should now see a blank thread) and wait a minute. As a tip, I would switch to another app and use that for a minute or so to ensure I did not start deleting too quickly.
5. After a minute or so, go into the next oldest thread and repeat the above process.
6. After repeating 4-5 times (for short threads), go and delete all of the blank threads with no messages listed. Let your phone rest for a few minutes after deleting.
7. Keep repeating until you are satisfied with the amount of threads you have. Remember, larger message threads require longer waiting times. If you jump the gun, you will need to restart your phone and repeat again. After I deleted 15-20 threads, I would shut off my phone and turn it back on, to ensure all the threads I deleted would remain deleted, just in case I acted too quickly and it would freeze up on me.
8. As your number of threads dwindles down, your phone will become faster and you can start to delete via the normal method of swiping the whole thread and clicking delete. Again, remember this will only work for small threads.

This is just what I did and it worked. You may have to tweak depending on how many threads you have and how slow or fast your phone is.

Hope this helps, I know it is frustrating!

I am working through mawest11's procedure and it appears to be working. It is very slow, but I am hoping once done my messaging might be fixed. I would be interested in knowing from mawest11 if once you delete all of your message threads the problem recurs and you always have to use this procedure in future. -Debbi

Hi Debbi-

Yes it is definitely a slow procedure, but one that worked for me, so it was well worth the wait. I have yet to delete my two biggest threads (which I believe are the root of the problem). I plan on doing that in the next week or so, so once that is done I will update you. But as for now, I am still using the same process to delete messages, just to be safe.

Matt

I could tell when everything was back to normal and I had deleted what must have been the problem threads because suddenly everything was much faster. I was able to test that normal thread deletion works fine now, and threads do not reappear after I reboot. I also did the storage-freeing process mentioned in another thread where you eliminate messages from the Spotlight Search (which I never use anyway).

Thanks to all who post here!

Debbi

OK so I've been having the same issues I thought it was just me. I started having this problem a few months ago & i've tried everything possible to fix this issue & nothing works. I currently have a iPhone 6. But it starated with my iPhone 5s so I called my carrier & complained because I was under the impression that it was an issue on my carriers end long story short they sent me a new SIM card but the issues was not resolved. So I thought hmmm maybe it's my iPhone 5s. So I decided to go out & purchase the iPhone 6 & I am having the same issues so I'm guessing it has something to do with my iCloud or apple account that I have linked to my phones. it upsets me because apple devices are the furthest thing from cheap & I've had everything from the iPhone 3, 4, 5, 5s, 6, MacBooks, iPads, & iPods & I just feel that someone investing so much money into these devices shouldn't be having such issues this is ridiculous & when I call tech support they have no answers for me besides restart my phone!!! HELP!

This is definitely an Apple issue, and to resolve it is not intuitive and timely. Since, you have bought a new iPhone you get free support from Apple. Set aside sometime in the immediate future and call Apple support. Have them walk you through resolving this issue. If there is an Apple Store where you live you can also make an appointment and have one of the "Geniuses" help you out. It is a very bad bug.

You say it is a bug? Is there a way to find out the source of said bug? I have sat with Apple Support online walking me through the issue and possible ways to resolve it. They did some sort of remote scan and nothing came up. How would so many people have the same bug?

It is just getting really frustrating having this problem. I have a looooong thread of messages in the Messaging App and every single time I try to go through and delete the unwanted text message threads, my phone freezes, the Message App stops working and goes blank, the Settings are frozen for Messages (iMessage stuck in "off" position). So, I restart my phone and boom, all the messages I deleted are back.

Any update on this from anyone? Fingers crossed iOS 9 sorts it out.

I just updated to iOS 9 and IT IS FIXED! Hope it works for you too! I was nervous to try but I deleted all of my old text message threads I didn't want anymore and it worked with no problem. 🙂

Yeah iOS9 has fixed it!!

Took them long enough haha

Ive definitely been having problems with iMessage for well over a year. Thank god this has fixed it, was so annoying.

Yeah! I had only noticed mine from the beginning of this year (maybe I wasn't really deleting messages before! haha) but going back through these threads it looks like it's been a problem since like 2013. So happy it is fixed though!