Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Flykhidtre

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 21, 2020
1
0
I have a brand new phone iPhone 12 Pro and 8gb of text messages is taking up my internal storage and I checked iCloud and it says my messages are using iCloud storage but 8gb of text messages is taking up my phones internal storage. Is it possible for all of my text messages to use iCloud storage only?
 
I have a brand new phone iPhone 12 Pro and 8gb of text messages is taking up my internal storage and I checked iCloud and it says my messages are using iCloud storage but 8gb of text messages is taking up my phones internal storage. Is it possible for all of my text messages to use iCloud storage only?
According to Apple the Messages on iCloud feature doesn’t work this way although their website gives you this impression. They told me the below last week:
  • Messages in iCloud will only allow the Messages to be in iCloud as well as the iPhone, it does not delete them from the local storage on the iPhone
  • This is useful for if you want the Messages to be shown across all of your devices, etc.
  • For the messages, if they have attachments, they are expected to consume storage, as for iCloud messages, they are only being synced, not optimize.
So it looks like messages in iCloud still takes up the same space locally on your iPhone as it does on iCloud. I was under the impression it would create a local cache for messages and just texts that you access, and offload everything else to iCloud therefore reducing the storage used on your local iPhone storage.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.