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Deleting all messages on IOS 8: Good, Bad, Ugly...

N

neurocutie

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 29, 2014
12
0
Like many, I find that having a good clean way of deleting all text messages to be really important and needed. For IOS 6, there were one or two Jailbreak apps that could do it well. For IOS 7, I have read about the tweak DeleteAllMessages which is supposed to work... but I've tried that on IOS 8 (on my 5S) and it doesn't work. I can't find any other reasonable solution for this important problem... I know about the new IOS 8 feature of deleting messages after 30 days, or 1 year, etc... but I find that 1) 30 days is too long, 2) the message are not completely delete but leave the threads (conversations?) hanging behind... There are apparently expensive PC solutions to clean/erase the iphone, but they aren't very appealing as a routine solution.

Finally after having all my messages pile up without a solution, I just went in with iFunBox and deleted smb.db* (in /var/mobile/Library/SMS). I rebooted right afterwards. It seems to work...

Have I done something really terrible, corrupting my iphone? If not, why is it so difficult to write an app that just deletes these few files?

Anyways... I guess its a solution to this long standing problem... i'm going to try to write a little shell script to do this within IOS so i don't need iFunBox.
 
Chatter said:
Edit - select what you want - delete.

All messages and threads are gone. Whats the issue?
Click to expand...

I'm guessing that doesn't truly delete them but just removes references to them. The data is probably still there and can be found with special tools.
 
Chatter said:
Edit - select what you want - delete.

All messages and threads are gone. Whats the issue?
Click to expand...
The issue comes when you (I) have hundreds to thousands of messages... all from different senders. It would take HOURS to individually select each little conversation. What one needs (and the older JB tweaks provide, but not for IOS 8) is one button that deletes ALL messages...

Nevermind the fact that select/delete does not really delete and the storage is still being used, which can be GB's...
 
I've never understood why people save texts/iMessages. I am OCD when it comes to deleting them as soon as I read/send them unless they have some info I need to refer to in the very near future.
 
noobinator said:
I've never understood why people save texts/iMessages. I am OCD when it comes to deleting them as soon as I read/send them unless they have some info I need to refer to in the very near future.
Click to expand...
I agree, but I might get 100+ messages each day and manually deleting that many each day is a bit much, compared with hitting a single button that wipes them all...
 
neurocutie said:
The issue comes when you (I) have hundreds to thousands of messages... all from different senders. It would take HOURS to individually select each little conversation. What one needs (and the older JB tweaks provide, but not for IOS 8) is one button that deletes ALL messages...

Nevermind the fact that select/delete does not really delete and the storage is still being used, which can be GB's...
Click to expand...

How will a "select and delete all" button prevent phone storage from being used....if that is true? Anyway, I dont get 100's of messages so I am not exactly looking for a simpler solution to this issue. Hope you can find something quick.
 
Last edited:
neurocutie said:
The issue comes when you (I) have hundreds to thousands of messages... all from different senders. It would take HOURS to individually select each little conversation..
Click to expand...

I just timed myself. It took less than 1 minute to select 100 conversations. Hardly "hours".
 
Chatter said:
How will a "select and delete all" button prevent phone storage from being used....if that is true? Anyway, I dont get 100's of messages so I am not exactly looking for a simpler solution to this issue. Hope you can find something quick.
Click to expand...
Because if you know you want to erase ALL messages, it is easier to just delete the entire DB and all attachment folders, truly reducing storage to ZERO. Otherwise, most select/delete schemes just remove the pointer or set a flag in the DB but don't free up storage or actually erase the data.

----------
chabig said:
I just timed myself. It took less than 1 minute to select 100 conversations. Hardly "hours".
Click to expand...
and so thousands would be tens of minutes... vs a fractional second to hit one little button... you don't see the value or value your time that much, fine...
 
neurocutie said:
[/COLOR]and so thousands would be tens of minutes... vs a fractional second to hit one little button... you don't see the value or value your time that much, fine...
Click to expand...

Are you saying you have thousands of conversations saved? Meaning you text/iMessage with thousands of different people. If so, just restore your phone as new.
 
Hope this isn't a highjack, but when a delete it a text conversation, it resurrects whenever I start a new text conversation with the same person.

How do I delete a past conversation to ensure it is truly gone?
 
noobinator said:
Are you saying you have thousands of conversations saved? Meaning you text/iMessage with thousands of different people. If so, just restore your phone as new.
Click to expand...
??? restoring means trashing ALL my other data, apps, etc, etc... that makes no sense... you want me to start from ground zero every few weeks just so my messages get deleted???

Most of these thousands of message threads are generated by forwarded emails into the SMS system, so yet, as far as IOS is concerned, they are thousands of "different people"...

But its not just me, Google "delete all messages IOS" and you'll see quite a few people want this feature and AFAIK there have been at least 3-4 different JB tweak/apps written to do the job... just none for IOS 8 yet...
 
neurocutie said:
I agree, but I might get 100+ messages each day and manually deleting that many each day is a bit much, compared with hitting a single button that wipes them all...
Click to expand...

Delete them as soon as you've read them then. Get on top and stay on top lol.
 
I'm the opposite, I have on my iPhone all my texts since when I got my first iPhone 3G. Never started as new on my upgrades.

I remember when I got the iPhone I was mad (still am actually) about not having an endless call history. I had that with my Treos I had before I moved to the iPhone.
 
noobinator said:
I think savings 1000s of conversations is just as much OCD as me deleting every message.
Click to expand...

I was making a joke about your own statement good sir. You dated you don't understand how anyone doesn't delete their message; your OCD forces you to. Well, maybe those without ocd don't have that compulsion.

Anyway, he said he does group text a lot. My wife has a group text between managers in her store. It's not uncommon for her to get a couple hundred texts a day. And sometimes she has to go back and reference them. It's really not that strange.
 
noobinator said:
I've never understood why people save texts/iMessages. I am OCD when it comes to deleting them as soon as I read/send them unless they have some info I need to refer to in the very near future.
Click to expand...

I save all my messages. Why? Because I can reference them when needed. You need to realize, because I assume you don't based on your comment, that people use their smartphones for work and business. I'm in real estate management, investment and development. On any given day I'm coordinating with 6-8 contractors on 3-4 properties. I don't even take business cards anymore, I just take a photo of them because I can just go back and find it. Same goes for any numbers I need to remember. Why writes down numbers these days? I don't. I always take a photo of it and maybe input it into my contacts later.

On a regular basis I send and receive text of information I need such as codes, images of drawing/sites/addresses and many other items. It is of great use to me to keep those items on my phone so I can go back to them.

I assure you many industries of business keep texts and messages for similar reasons.

EDIT: I do however delete sensitive information once I receive it such as certain numbers, codes, etc. But, that's very simple (swipe - delete).
 
I like iOS, but deleting messages is the ONE issue I have with it.

I receive text from monitoring software for work, and these messages come in as if they are from different users each time for tracking purpose. At times when there were a big issues, I end up with hundred of messages in a few minutes. It's a pain to delete them as you can't select one user and do delete all.
 
noobinator said:
I've never understood why people save texts/iMessages.
Click to expand...

For the past 18 years, I've lived about 1,800 miles away from my parents, and spoke to my dad a lot by phone. Once text messages became popular, we would text.

He passed away a year ago. Obviously there's no trace of the phone calls anymore (unless the NSA has copies they'd like to lend me), nor of any texts we shared pre-iPhone, but I pack-ratted any and all text conversations we had from mid-2007 onwards beginning with my first iPhone, including photos we exchanged.

I'm a sentimental schmuck I guess, but I'm glad I never deleted those messages, and glad they carried on even after every upgrade of my iPhone. They're a really good cross-section of everyday conversations we'd have, and I don't have anything else like it. I've got videos and pictures too, but those things are contrived, done for the camera. These texts were just us being us.

If anything, I'd be happy to delete those conversations, IF there was an Apple-supported way to export them to something else that I can have for safe keeping. There's the 3rd party methods, and grabbing the texts from local backups, but they always end up being a jumbled mess.
 
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