Dropping large imessage backup from iCloud?

[igneousc]

messages is using 84 gigs in my iCloud backup, and its basically all because I dont want to lose my texts with my mom on my device(she passed away). Im ok with the "keep messages" setting for 1 year, but if I do that I'll lose those earlier texts right? Any ideas to shrink my messages backup size while retaining the texts with that one person on device?
Thanks

 

[conmee]

I was thinking something similar. I have 72GB which blows my mind since I don't keep many texts. Based on what I can find, if you go to Settings | iCloud | Messages | Manage Storage and select "Turn Off and Delete from iCloud" iCloud will download all of your messages from iCloud to your iPhone (assuming you have enough free space... in my case I need 72GB available). Once that is complete, your phone will have all your mom's messages and they will no longer be on iCloud. Delete all messages you do not want to keep. Then wait 30 days (otherwise iCloud will restore all the messages). After 30 days with only your mom's or other messages you choose to keep, you can turn iCloud back on and it will upload your iPhone messages back to iCloud and it should take up much less space. iCloud keeps every attachment, photo, emoji, genmoji, sticker, etc from every message so that's why it grows over time. I'm at 72.9GB right now even after permanently deleting the "Deleted Messages" from the Messages app. I'm going to give this "Turn Off and Delete from iCloud" setting, curate/delete messages once they are all downloaded to my phone, then wait 30 days and then re-enable iCloud Messages sync and see if that shrinks the iCloud size for Messages. I think this is the way to do it.

 

[conmee]

Ok, I just did it. Here's the current status in settings for the next 30 days. It still says 72.9GB so I guess I'll have to wait 30 days before it goes to zero. All of my messages are still in Messages on the iPhone so nothing disappeared from the phone when I turned off Messages. I'll check back in, in 30 days, and let you know how it goes.

 

[conmee]

Also it looks like I have to disable iCloud Messages on my Mac (and any other devices) to make sure iCloud deletes all messages. So be aware that all devices need to be logged out of iCloud Messages for the 30 day deletion to complete.

 

[ManuCH]

messages is using 84 gigs in my iCloud backup, and its basically all because I dont want to lose my texts with my mom on my device(she passed away). Im ok with the "keep messages" setting for 1 year, but if I do that I'll lose those earlier texts right? Any ideas to shrink my messages backup size while retaining the texts with that one person on device?
Thanks

There are tools to export iMessage conversations from local iTunes/Finder backups on the Mac (like iMazing if I'm not mistaken). I've done that in the past but it was several years ago.

So you could export the conversation and then delete it from iMessage.

 

[conmee]

Ah, I forgot about iMazing. I have an active copy in my MBP. I’ll give it a try tomorrow. I usually use it to backup apps in the past that are no longer on the App Store. Will see what it can do with Messages.

 

[conmee]

@igneousc I tried a few things with iMazing today. It will backup messages (and the entire phone) from iPhone but it won't clear out iCloud. This will let you restore messages to an iPhone but the issue seems to be that unless you turn off iCloud Messages for all devices and turn off iCloud Messages sync, iCloud Messages will just keep growing even if you delete messages from the Messages app. I'm not sure why Apple does it this way.

iMazing lets you export all the messages to PDF or TXT or a couple other formats. That functionality alone might be worth buying iMazing and ensuring all your mom's texts are preserved even if something happens to your iPhone or iCloud storage.

So unless someone knows of another process/workaround, I think the only way to "shrink" the iCloud Messages size is turn everything off for 30 days (like I show above) so a permanent delete is performed on iCloud. Then after 30 days, enable iCloud Messages and it will sync whatever is on your iPhone/Mac back to iCloud. If you've deleted everything from your iPhone except your mom's texts and also make sure to permanently empty/delete "Deleted Messages" in the Messages app, then when you re-enable iCloud Messages after 30 days, it should only have your mom's texts in iCloud.

I'm going to be curious how much I can shrink my iCloud Messages with the above process. I've set a reminder for August 3. I will re-enable at that time and see how much smaller my messages are than current (72.9GB). I only have about 50 recent family texts on my iPhone at the moment, so there's no way they should take up 72.9GB.