Another iCloud messages question

[Jon80]

hello, sorry if this has been asked look around and cannot find it.

I was eagerly awaiting 11.4 to save storage space on my pretty full devices. My iPhone has 3-4gb of messages. After installing 11.4 and enabling iCloud messages and all messages syncing to the cloud and appearing in my iCloud storage messages is *still* using nearly the exact same storage space on my iPhone! Is that meant to be? Why store locally as well as the cloud?

I assumed maybe it was my old attachments, but even new photos coming through seem to be storing locally. I was hoping this would all be in the cloud rather than stored separately on each device.

Is iCloud messages supposed to include attachments? Any advice or thoughts here?

Thanks in advance

 

[skillwill]

I noticed the same thing with mine after downloading 11.4 and turning it on. When I woke up this morning and had a look, and my ON PHONE Messages storage had gone down from 400MB to 9MB. Checked and it's still 400MB on iCloud storage, and all is as it was in my Messages app (I wouldn't know anything had changed if I didn't know). The only thing I can think is that it moved everything properly while it was plugged in over night. I can't put it down to anything else other than it maybe possibly just took a day or so to complete the whole process, because I certainly didn't do anything other than wait. Hopefully yours too will sort it out.

 

[macduke]

I don't understand any of this either. Before I turned it on, I had 2.6GB in Messages. Then I turned it on and there was 9.4GB in iCloud. But when I look at iPhone storage it's still 2.6GB and recommends I review large attachments. But when I click on Messages in iCloud storage it shows "Conversations Zero KB >" which doesn't make sense. None of this makes any sense!

 

[ras113]

I don't understand any of this either. Before I turned it on, I had 2.6GB in Messages. Then I turned it on and there was 9.4GB in iCloud. But when I look at iPhone storage it's still 2.6GB and recommends I review large attachments. But when I click on Messages in iCloud storage it shows "Conversations Zero KB >" which doesn't make sense. None of this makes any sense!

On my icloud messages is 1.5 gb.

I did set up phone as new., and now on phone messages are only taking 132mb.

Its seems like i have all conservations and also photos in and looks like im not missinh antrhing. But how is it possible to only be 132mb when on icloud its 1.5gb??

 

[ignatius345]

I don't understand any of this either. Before I turned it on, I had 2.6GB in Messages. Then I turned it on and there was 9.4GB in iCloud. But when I look at iPhone storage it's still 2.6GB and recommends I review large attachments. But when I click on Messages in iCloud storage it shows "Conversations Zero KB >" which doesn't make sense. None of this makes any sense!

Same here, but when I tap on where it says "Zero KB", I see a list of conversations and how much storage each is taking up. So the Zero part is definitely wrong, but there's some possibly correct info within. You can also delete whole conversations from that view, but I'm not sure if that deletes them on the phone, iCloud, or both.

This all feels rather half-baked, like more and more stuff at Apple these days...

 

[sbailey4]

I saw elsewhere where once it finishes AND an iCloud backup runs, the storage updates and is reported correctly. So perhaps @skillwill overnight when plugged in and backup ran is when it got straight. Again once every thing is uploaded to iCloud which could take a while depending on how much you have stored.

 

[Theophil1971]

I don't understand any of this either. Before I turned it on, I had 2.6GB in Messages. Then I turned it on and there was 9.4GB in iCloud. But when I look at iPhone storage it's still 2.6GB and recommends I review large attachments. But when I click on Messages in iCloud storage it shows "Conversations Zero KB >" which doesn't make sense. None of this makes any sense!

It works the same as with photos and documents... a copy is stored locally on your devices, and then another copy is stored in iCloud, which keeps the local versions backed-up and synced. So, storing iMessages in the cloud won't change local storage space on your phone or iPad.

 

[sbailey4]

It works the same as with photos and documents... a copy is stored locally on your devices, and then another copy is stored in iCloud, which keeps the local versions backed-up and synced. So, storing iMessages in the cloud won't change local storage space on your phone or iPad.

Not exactly. The attachments and photos are stored in iCloud.

"Messages in iCloud are updated automatically so you always have the same view everywhere you use iMessage. When you delete a message, photo or conversation on one device, it’s removed from all of your devices. And since all of your attachments are stored in iCloud, you can save space on your device."

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208532

 

[CrashTestWalrus]

From what I can see with how it works so far is it is like iCloud Photo Library. The messages are still on your device, but not all of them, sort of like how iCloud photo library pulls all the thumbnails then downloads on demand when you want to look at some photo or video. That data that is pulled on demand is put in a cache area that the phone can then delete anytime it needs space. If you have 3-4 GB of free space on your device it might not be ejecting messages from your device yet because that isn't crucially low. Say you wanted to download an HD movie out of iTunes that clocked in at 4 GB, it would likely start ejecting data as the download completed. I managed to put my iCloud messages in a confused state during the beta period and am currently waiting on the deletion of it on iCloud to go through. It is a 30 day timer by default with no way to speed that up, so I am unable to do much with it right now in the release. I tried to open a case with Apple about it with no dice currently, there is no tool on their end available to support to speed that clock up.

 

[dustin.haley]

Delete your old iCloud backup and turn it back on. The new backup will be much smaller! I went from a 12gb backup to a 2gb backup after I enabled messages in iCloud and deleted my old iCloud backup.

 

[macduke]

It works the same as with photos and documents... a copy is stored locally on your devices, and then another copy is stored in iCloud, which keeps the local versions backed-up and synced. So, storing iMessages in the cloud won't change local storage space on your phone or iPad.

Well that makes it pretty useless! I thought the whole point of it was to save space on our devices by offloading the history to the iCloud and we can pull it down or search it when we need it to reference something.

 

[Dwalls90]

Well that makes it pretty useless! I thought the whole point of it was to save space on our devices by offloading the history to the iCloud and we can pull it down or search it when we need it to reference something.

Wrong.

Apple will keep recent messages locally stored on your device, but older ones and most attachments get put to the cloud. Your local device and iCloud will not have the same mirrored copy at all times.

 

[macduke]

Wrong.

Apple will keep recent messages locally stored on your device, but older ones and most attachments get put to the cloud. Your local device and iCloud will not have the same mirrored copy at all times.

I'm wrong or the guy who replied to me? Because I thought it worked the way you just described but now I'm being told otherwise.

Ok, I just now checked my storage space again and it has dropped down to 1.9GB used for Messages, so something is going on. My internet at home is decently fast though, so IDK why it has taken this long. I work from home on Fridays so it has been connected and on my charging pad most of the day. I'd be interested to know how far back it stores things locally. It has only dropped 0.7GB, and I currently have my iPhone X set to keep messages for a year.

Also, nobody has explained why when I first turned it on, it used about three times the Messages space in iCloud? I guess I kinda understand why when turning on my iPad it would add more data, but after one device activation it was already at 9.4GB and later jumped up to 12 something when I turned on my iPad, even though my iPad just has the same conversations. Doesn't make any sense! At least my conversations are now showing up in the iCloud list.

 

[ignatius345]

Holy crap. After syncing two Macs and my iPhone, I have 10GB of messages.

Not all that was on my phone, but at least 1GB was, because I got about that much storage back on my phone after all was said and done. Seems to work as advertised from what I can tell.