When writing a new text message and putting in a contact in the "To:" line, old recent contacts will stream below. How do I clear all recent text contacts? I know you can individually remove them from recent by clicking the "i" beside their name, but I want to clear ALL of the recent contacts. I used to be able to do this in settings but I can't seem to find it.
iPhone 4S, iOS 7.1
Type +1 in the to field (assuming you're in US), then all of the "eligible" addresses will list. You can delete all of them from your list easily this way by doing tapping the ! next to those names.
Then you should only have those names/#'s that are actually in your contacts going forward.
Only works on my group messages—there’s no circled i beside other names.
Unfortunately this solution works only for recent contacts where the message was with an individual.
iOS also holds recent conversation groups, and these cannot be removed.
I used a free app called MultiDelete. I combed through my contacts using different search variables until I got rid of all the unwanted ones. Then I was able to go into messaging, type in a letter and the "I" would show up on the unwanted contacts, allowing me to "remove from recents". It took about an hour (I had a lot of garbage contacts), but it's finally fixed.
I have no vested interest in this app. I just downloaded it because it was free and looked promising.
How do I clear all recent text contacts so they don't come up when writing new text message?
