How do I remove/reduce Message attachments??

Hey hi Hello!


Here's my question and partial solution.


Like many others I have been getting an iCloud full message, repeatedly. Knowing enough I investigated to find my Messages were taking up the bulk of the free 5gb. After a little time of research the first change I made was setting the Settings > Messages > KEEP MESSAGES to 1 year and NOT forever. However, that did not even budge the storage bar down.


Then the next obvious problem is the number of photos and attachments I send through through iMessage and MMS. This is also where I am confused.


On my laptop I went into User > me > Library > Messages > Attachments and threw the whole folder into the trash and emptied it. That SHOULD have been the solution??? But I am still seeing the attachments on my iPhone?


How do I remove/reduce these images/attachments and clear out my iCloud storage of them??


Just to note. I have already tried the iPhone road.. But I am also hitting a road block there.

Messages > Name > Info > Images ..... there is NO WAY TO REMOVE THEM !! I think they forgot to include the delete option..... OR am I am just missing something obvious?!?!


Thanks for reading! I look forward to getting this fixed!


Ken

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Nov 8, 2018 8:41 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 8, 2018 10:07 AM

Found Something....


iPhone > Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Messages.


This seems to give me the ability to select multiple or individual attachments, videos, GIFS, Images and clear them out..


Now just trying to sync the house cleaning to the iCloud.

Similar questions

8 replies

Nov 8, 2018 9:29 AM in response to gail from maine

Great !!

Thanks Gail. I appreciate the quick reply.

I forgot to mention in my explanation about your solution... my hesitation has been with HOW MUCH does that "disable and delete" actually remove?

I do not wish to remove the all the conversations. Some are business related.

My preference rather is to just remove the attachments INSIDE the messages. It makes sense to me that the images/videos in the messages eat more GBs out of the iCloud than the messages themselves?


Ken

Nov 10, 2018 3:14 PM in response to Eric Root

Hi Eric. Thanks for the reply and suggestion. I had hoped it would reset the connection. Unfortunately after signing out of iCloud on both my MacBook and my iPhone the iCloud has not gone down to display the removal of images from both devices. It's getting a little frustrating now. And now iMessages does not seem to be syncing on either device. Suggestions ?

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

How do I remove/reduce Message attachments??

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.