How to delete old addresses that appear in auto complete list in iMessage

This is a disgraceful abuse of privacy. iCloud creates a list of all email addresses and phone numbers you've ever contacted on any iCloud-enabled device and you have little control over it. Yes it appears to let you remove items from the list individually from the iPhone but only after typing a few letters so it's virtually impossible to clear the list. There's no way to view the complete list or its file location within iCloud, delete the list entirely in one go or turn off the remembering behaviour or "feature".

Furthermore, I keep trying to delete previous recipients from within Mail in OS X as described online (by selecting "Previous Recipients" from the Window menu) but it keeps repopulating with the addresses I deleted!

It's disgusting that computers and now internet services record so much of your activity and in most cases for little or no reason or benefit. OS X and iPhone have perfectly good Contacts apps that lets *me* control who and what I want the phone to remember and sync to the cloud. I don't need or want iCloud's separate previously contacted history thank you very much.

Try the following

1. Open iOS Messages app (Not the contacts app)
2. Create new message
3. Type in the search text, to search
4. When your unwanted old address appears click the i button next to it.
5. Then tap on "Remove from Recents"
6. This should sync to your mac / iOS devices if the same account has been setup in all your apple devices

Refer - http://www.tekrevue.com/tip/remove-recent-contacts-iphone-messages/

First, search Contacts to make sure the address doesn't appear on any card. If it doesn't, continue.

Back up all data.

Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat

Right-click or control-click the line and select

Services ▹ Reveal in Finder (or just Reveal)

from the contextual menu.* A folder should open with an item selected. Quit the application if it's running. Move the selected item to the Trash. Relaunch the application and test.

*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. In the Finder, select

Go ▹ Go to Folder...

from the menu bar, paste into the box that opens (command-V). You won't see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.

On an iPhone, when that list appears when you start typing a contact, numbers or addresses that are not part of your contact list will have a circled "i" to the right side if it. If you click on that i you can delete that number or address there. I'm not sure if it works the same way on a computer.

This completely worked for me. I removed from recents as you described, from my iPhone. Then after about 20 seconds, I went back to Messages on my mac and started to type the name that kept popping up and it was gone.

The was driving me nuts because I didn't have a historical message on my mac from the person and I had deleted the contact from my address book. But because I had once messaged them from my phone, it kept generating.

Thanks Glenn Leblanc

Did you try this before you posted? I have tried everything to delete an autofill group in Messages on iPad Air. It has the circed "i", and I get the pop-up of Recents, which has a Remove to click on, but it does absolutely nothing. Is there anyone that has tested and had success with this annoying problem? Please post if you have solved this issue.

IN OS X 10.9.3 Mavericks select the unwanted address from the auto fill selection list. When it appears in the To: line click the small down arrow at the right edge of the address. A menu will apprear that allows you to remove it from iMessage list. This menu only appears if the address is not in your contacts.

@muzel-e

I went through the painful process of trying to delete the recipient history one-by-one and at first this seemed to work but guess what; after a complete erase and setting up the device as new THE PREVIOUSLY CONTACTED ADDRESSES AND CONTACTS REPOPULATED AGAIN!!!

Furthermore my "previous recipients in Mail in OS X have AGAIN repopulated. So not only do Apple make it extremely difficult to delete the tracked information they seemingly keep the information on their servers even after you've tried to delete it and it keeps repopulating. Apple only seems to delete the information from being visible on the devices you've attempted to delete them from. In other words APPLE IS TRACKING EVERY SINGLE ADDRESS AND NUMBER YOU EVER CONTACT and they refuse to let you delete the information. This corroborates other posts above that report similar situations where the information comes back even after you've tried to delete it.

This is shocking behaviour from a company that supposedly says they care about our privacy but really they're just pawns of the government and iCloud tracks everything about your activities. Remember when it was discovered that location history was stored in the device? Well, even if they made that harder to find or turned it off from being available on the device I bet that information is still tracked, sent and stored on iCloud.

The bottom line is I don't trust Apple anymore.

I am going to call AppleCare and complain but fat chance they'll change their routine data collection services because of a few complaints. The only thing you can do to prevent this tracking is turn off iCloud and refuse to sign in, thereby missing out on iMessage and other services including iCloud mail. It's a shame that Apple is behaving this way but I value my privacy more than a few internet services. I'd rather use services that are secure and that don't track and store usage information.

I also encourage anyone concerned by this to read about recent revelations of hidden services in iOS that collect and send information to Apple. http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/07/apple-documents-previously-undocumented- services-that-can-leak-user-data/

If you're on your Macbook, try this:

1) In the "No recipients" box of iMessage, begin typing in the name/phone number of the person you wish to delete

2) After it pulls up hit enter (as if you're going to type him/her a message)

3) Take your cursor, place it on the person's name/number, and drag the name/number to the trash can on your Macbook

4) Verify the number's gone by typing it in again in the "No recipients" box

Hopefully this helps. It helped me. 🙂

I've also done that method (placing number in trash), and it wouldn't work. I really thought this would solve it.

Someone please come up with a fix! I do not want old numbers being auto suggested when I type in "send to" in iMessage!

Linc Davis/tonynovo's solution worked for me. It took some finagling though.

As far as I can tell, the problem is caused by iMessages populating from your iPhone's Recent Contact list. Even though the problem manifests in the Messages app, the fix happens on your iPhone. I created a new message on the iPhone and started typing the name. I then saw the old number with a blue-circled "i" on the right edge. When I tapped that there was an option to "Remove from recent". This solved the issue on my Mac.

Note, however, the number didn't originally show up at all on my iPhone. It was only showing up in iMessages on my Mac. I tried many things, such as creating a fake contact for the old number, or deleting all the individual messages in the conversation. Nothing seemed to work. Right before I was about to give up, I typed in the name and saw the blue "i". So if you don't see it right away... don't give up! Maybe it needs to know that it is not a saved contact any more, and there is some glitchy stuff going on. Try as many different things as you can until the *magical* blue "i" appears.

Hope that helps.

Thanks raineorshine. I went back and tried Linc Davis' method, but can't seem to delete the proper folder. I tried the steps and still see the number showing up.

What's strange for me is that when I first wanted to remove this number from my phone, I did the "remove from recent" route. I tried again after your suggestion and it doesn't show up to be removed again. I was hopeful with your reply, thinking it would work for me.😐 It sounds identical to my case, as you say the number would never appear on your phone but would on iMessage on your mac. Is your suggestion to keep trying to type it in until it appears once again? I figured since I did this as the first step altogether, it couldn't be a possible solution.

That's very annoying. I wish I knew what finally fixed it for me, but unfortunately it was rather sudden and I didn't track the exact sequence of events. There's definitely something fishy about when the "Remove from recents" shows up or not. Doing the same thing repeatedly probably won't give you any progress. It's more like getting the right combination. I would try a number of different things, like creating a contact for the unwanted number, then deleting the contact, closing and reopening iMessages, deleting the "~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat" file, etc.

I did all of those things several times in different orders. It was so frustrating... I was about to give up! But apparently I did something right because it suddenly went away and hasn't come back. GOOD LUCK!

Thanks again for your input! Can you explain the process of deleting the library iChat folder? I followed Linc Davis' breakdown, but got a little puzzled with what happens after I paste the said link in Finder. After I press "Go To Folder", the results show me this: a "Data" folder, an "Old Data" folder, and "Container.plist". Why do I need to back any of these up if deleting them? By the way, I deleted the "Data" folder and then iMessage would no longer open at all. Am I deleting the incorrect one? I appreciate any help with this! Thanks for your time.

I deleted the whole "com.apple.iChat" folder. It contains Data and Container.plist. I'm not sure why your Messages didn't open after that. Maybe the partial delete is a problem, so I would delete the whole com.apple.iChat folder and try again. I didn't back up anything when I did it. Again, I don't know if this actually helped solve the problem or not!