iMessage are you organised or a hoarder

[JamesMay82]

How do you guys stay organised? are you message hoarders?

I delete all my messages but just keep ones going from my family and close friends so I have about 5 messages permanently in the App which are daily conversations and everything else gets deleted once ive replied to the person.

My wife and others have 50+ messages from different contacts which drives me mad as some of them go back years!

 

[eyoungren]

I only delete unsolicited spam messages.

My iMessage history goes back to late 2011. This isn't a problem because I always get the largest capacity iPhone Apple offers for whatever model I am buying. Right now, that's the 11PM so I have the 512GB model.

However, I could lose every message today and there'd be no issue. Between family/friends, nothing important is ever discussed via messages. It's in person. Any important photos (that I want to keep) are saved to the camera roll (and then get sent up to Dropbox).

Everyone else doesn't matter enough to bother with.

 

[floral]

I don't message anyone... most of my "friends" (acquaintances) are on an external social media like Discord, iMessage is a little too personal for me

 

[rocketbuc]

I am keeping my iMessages down to a minimum. Regularly delete messages and larger threads to free up space and keep things clean. Have iMessage in iCloud activated so that it stays synced across my devices. Does not work all the time unfortunately…

 

[LunarFalcon]

I like the option to delete messages automatically after a set length of time, but I wish there were more options. The longest is 1 year, but I'd love if you could save messages for 3 years then delete them.

 

[rambo47]

I keep a few conversations with family and work but I keep what's on my phone pared down. And every so often I do a clean sweep and delete everything. I can save any attachments I want/need, and I can take a screenshot of conversations to which I may need to refer later on.

 

[Jackbequickly]

Are there methods to archive messages before removing from your phone. I keep messages to people who I message often but delete the rest.

 

[contacos]

I always delete messages like pin confirmation texts and ALL attachments (Photos etc) at least once a week. I wish iMessage had an auto save to camera roll feature like WhatsApp.

 

[Helmsley]

I don't use iMessage THAT much...I mainly use Facebook Messenger.

 

[Slix]

On my phone, I typically keep a year of messages before it auto deletes them. On my Mac, I have messages going back to 2011 when iMessage started, and even earlier for iChat messages prior to that. I don't have them synced to iCloud because it doesn't seem worth it to constantly have access to that many years of messages when usually I just want to see what the last few things were from someone when I'm on the go with my phone. I only delete spam messages and even then sometimes keep them to see if they are repeat offenders.

 

[i4k20c]

i am a hoarder so love reading what people do. would be awesome to have a setting to always keep messages from certain people (say family and loved ones), and everyone else deletes after a set time.

 

[i4k20c]

On my phone, I typically keep a year of messages before it auto deletes them. On my Mac, I have messages going back to 2011 when iMessage started, and even earlier for iChat messages prior to that. I don't have them synced to iCloud because it doesn't seem worth it to constantly have access to that many years of messages when usually I just want to see what the last few things were from someone when I'm on the go with my phone. I only delete spam messages and even then sometimes keep them to see if they are repeat offenders.

how do you set up messages stay for different devices? are they still in the cloud? could you download them to your phone if you wanted or are they physically on your laptop hdd?

 

[Slix]

how do you set up messages stay for different devices? are they still in the cloud? could you download them to your phone if you wanted or are they physically on your laptop hdd?

They are not in iCloud, only new messages get downloaded to each device that is signed in. The MacBook holds them all in its SSD locally, and you cannot download them to the phone through that.

 

[iMarkypad]

I only delete unsolicited spam messages.

My iMessage history goes back to late 2011. This isn't a problem because I always get the largest capacity iPhone Apple offers for whatever model I am buying. Right now, that's the 11PM so I have the 512GB model.

However, I could lose every message today and there'd be no issue. Between family/friends, nothing important is ever discussed via messages. It's in person. Any important photos (that I want to keep) are saved to the camera roll (and then get sent up to Dropbox).

Everyone else doesn't matter enough to bother with.

You must be rich if you always get the 512 GB model. iPhone do you have now?

 

[eyoungren]

You must be rich if you always get the 512 GB model. iPhone do you have now?

I'm not rich. I live paycheck to paycheck basically. Always the next bill to pay.

My current primary phone is the iPhone 11 Pro Max. I got it in February 2021 when the 12 series was mid-cycle and the 13 series was coming. I upgrade phones every 2.5 to 5.5 years and as of 2021, it looks to be two models behind. When I do upgrade, it's financed with my carrier over two years. I've never purchased a phone outright.

The youngest Macs I own are 2009 vintage, and my iPad is a 6th gen (2018). I drive a 2013 Sentra and a 1997 Accord. As of this morning there is $41.61 in my bank account (I get paid tomorrow, but then I have to pay the mortgage).

So, no. Not rich.

 

[Longplays]

I wish I could have saved all my messages from 1998 to today like with the iPhone.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Saving messages gets really costly... I'm part of several group texts where 30-80GB of photos get shared per year EASILY. (Family chats). I REALLY like the feature in Photos that shows photos shared with you but it's getting expensive to save all those iMessages - and multiply that by several members on my family plan doing the same thing.

I used to have messages saved from all the way back on my 4s but eventually I wiped them all last year, and did again this year. I'm already back up to 12GB of iMessages being used on my iCloud storage plan after only a few months.

Edit: Point of reference - family members are in the hundreds of Gigs...

 

[Expos of 1969]

I use WhatsApp and delete messages once read. The only exceptions are messages confirming the date and time and place of a meeting or appointment. I delete those after the event has taken place. If people send me a photo in a message I immediately save it to Google Photo or delete it.