I have 10.4 gb of messages. It's taking up so much space on my phone and I NEED to get rid of it. Any suggestions?
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10.4 GB of messages
- Thread starter zachleon11
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I've tried to delete them but that doesn't make them disappear from the iPhone. They're not permanently deleted. I need to find out how to delete all of this room that my texts are taking up.
2 Options:
Completely restore and set phone up as new OR follow the following instruction from: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5350408
I used that method and recovered a lot of space on both iPad and iPhone.
Make a backup in iTunes
open iBackupBot (Google it)
Go to the relevant backup
Click on Multimedia File Manager and click on the other Multimedia files tab
Sort by filename by clicking the Filename tab
Find MediaDomain/Library/SMS/Attachments and highlight all of them, then press delete. You can also click to export to a folder of your choice, if you want to save them that is.
Then go to System Files>MediaDomain>Library>SMS>Attachments
They will be all listed here, highlight them all and press delete
Then just restore that backup using iTunes!
(The last step is pretty simple. When the phone is plugged into iTunes, right click the device and restore from backup, not restore phone. Select the backup that you created and edited and in about 5 minutes it will be done and those messages will be gone)
Completely restore and set phone up as new OR follow the following instruction from: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5350408
I used that method and recovered a lot of space on both iPad and iPhone.
Make a backup in iTunes
open iBackupBot (Google it)
Go to the relevant backup
Click on Multimedia File Manager and click on the other Multimedia files tab
Sort by filename by clicking the Filename tab
Find MediaDomain/Library/SMS/Attachments and highlight all of them, then press delete. You can also click to export to a folder of your choice, if you want to save them that is.
Then go to System Files>MediaDomain>Library>SMS>Attachments
They will be all listed here, highlight them all and press delete
Then just restore that backup using iTunes!
(The last step is pretty simple. When the phone is plugged into iTunes, right click the device and restore from backup, not restore phone. Select the backup that you created and edited and in about 5 minutes it will be done and those messages will be gone)
you deleted every conversation manually?
did you try to delete the messages app in Usage?
Here is the bigger question...
Do you send and receive pics/video constantly? If not, I have a VERY hard time believing that you have 10+ gigs of messages. No, I am not calling you a liar. I am suggesting there may be some sort of glitch involved here...
Do you send and receive pics/video constantly? If not, I have a VERY hard time believing that you have 10+ gigs of messages. No, I am not calling you a liar. I am suggesting there may be some sort of glitch involved here...
I do receive pictures a lot, and I also receive snapchats a lot - both videos and pictures. I've also has an iPhone and have been backing it up/syncing it since summer 2008.
What's a "lot" though? Your average MMS picture is maybe 1.5 megs. Doind some quick math that is over 10k pictures... Your snapchats aren;t going to be stored here either. This should just be anything pertaining to the messages app.
I did do a sync last night directly after deleting a huge group text between me and my friends that has gone on for a little over a year. The sync appeared to free up room on what the breakdown of my memory of my iPhone looked like on the itunes-iPhone summary. But it went directly back to 10.5 gigs and I have just over 200mb available.
Well, I take back my previous statement about the size being in error. I just looked and I have 3.5 gigs and I certainly don't message all that much. We have been doing a lot of pics and video recently, but my phones only has about 2 gigs of pics on its own, so I doubt that is what is causing it.
So... what is causing the bloat?
So... what is causing the bloat?
There was a bug in iOS 6 that when you deleted the messages off the phone the attachments were left behind. The method I posted above removes the attachments from the phone, or you can restore and set up as new. Regardless the problem will be gone.
This.
If you can't get ibackbot to work you are going to need to restore as new.
Messages are saved to a back up whether you want them too or not. Because of that you need to edit the back up manually delete the messages then restore from that back up. Or restore as new.
You can also erase phone and restore from iCloud backup. That worked for me - erased all old messages "stored" on the phone- I didn't have to re-set up everything.
That may have worked for you but it's unlikely you were experiencing the bug. Message back up is hidden from the user. You can find it with programs like mentioned and then delete them. Regardless the messages are saved in back up on Mac/PC and/or iCloud.
I've restore from a back several times through multiple iPhones and the issue still persist. I'm not low enough on storage to fix it yet.
Well, I seemed to have the bug. I deleted all my messages. There were no messages showing up on my phone (message app). Under usage it said I had 1.4 gig of saved messages. Wiped phone and restored from iCloud (not iTunes), 1.4 gig of messages gone. I'm telling you it worked.
I am having this same issue.
Messages are taking up over 4 gigs of space. I deleted each message thread by hand... yet they still took up space and showed up after I turned the phone off and back in. I then synced it with iTunes but they are still there.
How has Apple not addressed this?? It seems like it would affect everybody!
Oh yeah - and please help
Messages are taking up over 4 gigs of space. I deleted each message thread by hand... yet they still took up space and showed up after I turned the phone off and back in. I then synced it with iTunes but they are still there.
How has Apple not addressed this?? It seems like it would affect everybody!
Oh yeah - and please help
Last edited:
I am having this same issue.
Messages are taking up over 4 gigs of space. I deleted each message thread by hand... yet they still took up space and showed up after I turned the phone off and back in. I then synced it with iTunes but they are still there.
How has Apple not addressed this?? It seems like it would affect everybody!
Oh yeah - and please help
Follow the steps I posted above. It will work.
I just tried it again hoping something had changed. While the phone feels a bit snappier I still have......
No messages.
Still using space
It's also in my iCloud. I'm going to just edit the back up file later and manually delete the messages.
Not sure if it is it, but I have notice that apps in the new iOS create a lot of cache files. There is no way to delete them in the iPhone unless the app has an option to delete the cache. I have noticed all my apps have bloated since installing them. I found a program call ifunbox for my laptop that allows me to access my app files and manually delete cache. It has cleared a lot of space on my phone. I tried going into the message app but could not access it. I think if it was jailbroken I could. I'm no expert in this kind of stuff, but maybe you need to someone clear cache. I discovered this when I was moving photos to my cloud drive but the app was just caching the photos and expanding the app, defeating the purpose of moving to the cloud.
Its not cache, its actually the saved attachments. In iOS 6, there was a bug that only deleted text, but not videos, pictures and sound clips. If you deleted the conversations before upgrading to 6.1, the attachments were saved permanently.
The only way to get rid of these saved attachments is either follow the instructions in my above post (by manually deleting them from the backup and restoring to that backup) or restoring phone as new. There are dozens of threads on various websites pointing out these methods as the only ones that will get the job done. All in all, it will only take about 10 minutes to edit the backup file and restore to that file.