Deleting Messages.app history folders doesn't work

Hi,

What "History" are you trying to remove ?

iMessages are stored in chat.db items in ~/Library/Messages and there are three that interact together.

Saved Chats (Set in the General Section of the Preferences > Save on Close) will Save the chat or conversation when the App is Quit, When the computer sleeps, if the computer is shut down with the App is open and when the Chat or conversation is dismissed from the list.

The chat.db items are the ones that are involved in "restoring" the iMessages "History" when you start a new chat with someone you have had contact with before.

The Saved Chats will work the same way for all saved chats, similar to the way the iMessages "History" works using the chat.db items.

(i.e. when you reconnect to the same person any Saved chat will be shown as well).

The items you seem to be removing are a bit over the top, but would seems to be aimed at clearing any sort of history to the app.

I am not aware of anywhere else that any history is held (I would not have emptied the Caches myself).

The Console log item is referring to Saved Chats in the subfolder called Archive within the Messages folder, deep within that Containers folder.

It would normally look for iMessages History via the Chat.db items (Or at least that is what I have always thought).

I am not sure what to suggest.

8:42 pm Tuesday; October 7, 2014

HI,

I must admit to not knowing enough about your Unix command codes to say if they are correct or not.

However they look correct.

Removing ~/Library/Messages would delete the chat.db items and the Attachments folder (where the Pics and Files that have been received are held)

That should delete the "history" from the iMessages Conversations in the main Messages window.

Similarly if you have been Save of Close then the removal of the contents of ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat/Data/Messages would delete the Archive Folder which itself would hold the save files in dated folders.

Deleting the caches would seem to be sensible but I have never done it to "prove" this is involved when trying a simple relocation to see what happens.

You are doing this with the App Quit ?

8:12 pm Wednesday; October 8, 2014

Ralph, I have the same issue as John. I uncheck "Save history when conversations are closed" but all history of my conversations are still there. Any other thoughts?

John, its been a few days since the last post, did you find something that worked for you? Please share if so.

Thanks!

Hi,

Are you using the Terminal app to remove the files ?

iMessages are saved in two ways.

One is the Save on Close and the other is the chat.db items

It is the chat.db items that restores the "history" to iMessages conversations if you have dismissed the previous conversations with that person.

What we have is what was the iChat way of Saving Chats and the iMessages way of working to show you the "history".
Strangely the Save Chat works the same way (it will display the last few IMs and then when you scroll up (back in time) it will display more of the chat.

This does mean that when Save on Close is used iMessages are saved two ways.

Stopping just Save on Close does not "delete" the chats from the chat.db items

8:51 pm Tuesday; October 21, 2014