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iOS 7 reveals iMessage's are hogging my storage.

cynics said:
I'm upset with Apple because of poor programming causing a bug in their software making it impossible to regain the space those messages used even after they are deleted. This effects iCloud and the physical space on the iOS device. Restoring from new or blundering around in the file system is the only way to fix this.

That in itself is annoying. Apple and everyone goes on and on about how great the back up system is but the slightest thing goes wrong and everyone tells you to restore from new.

If I only had true access to my iCloud I pay for even basic access I could fix this in 2 minutes.
Click to expand...

Understood. What happens if you manually delete a video MMS then the conversation?
 
cynics said:
That in itself is annoying. Apple and everyone goes on and on about how great the back up system is but the slightest thing goes wrong and everyone tells you to restore from new.
Click to expand...

I feel the same way but sometimes we have to think that this is still technology and a lot of things that have technology in them have bugs and/or don't operate the way we want them to. Nearly every computing device we use tends to perform better when we start with a fresh filesystem.
 
I send thousands of imessages each month (both pic/text) and also have multi group messages which I keep active for easy chat. I just checks and I have 235MB.
 
emseven said:
Understood. What happens if you manually delete a video MMS then the conversation?
Click to expand...

Don't know. Currently it deletes exactly how you'd expect it too. But back with the bug any messages including there pics and videos would appear to be deleted but not actually free the space used.

Now come iOS 7 and we can see message usage and even with every single message in the app deleted I still have 1.7gb used for it. It shows up in iTunes as "other". This is from that bug back in iOS 6.

Since I don't have access to those messages I can't redelete them to gain the space back.
 
Do I need a newer version of iBackupbot? Because my version only gives me options to Check or uncheck the items, no option to delete the attachments, and the delete key wont work either.... I'm sure its something simple that I'm missing.

Once again, I'm using iBackupBot version 3.6.5 on Windows 7

UPDATE: Downloaded newest version of iBackupBot. Freed up 850MB of space on my phone and 3.9 GB on my wifes. Thanks.
 
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theres got to be a way get around this and not have to use ibackupbot... I have a 64gb iphone 4s and to constantly free up space every few weeks is going to be annoying... I send a ton of photos from my phone that I msg to clients and friends/family. Right now since upgrading to iOS7, I have 5.6gb of Messages!! still 19gb free... but I can see this space filling up quick.

Im surprised Apple hasnt fixed this issue even with 2 updates of iOS7
 
I noticed this on my iPhone 5 yesterday. I deleted all my messages and rebooted - most of them came back, albeit corrupted. If I click on an older message the app hangs and then loads. There will only be one message in the thread and it's the most recent.

I just updated to 7.0.3 and it still does the same thing. It's eating up over 4gig of space too.
 
VIIGraphix said:
theres got to be a way get around this and not have to use ibackupbot... I have a 64gb iphone 4s and to constantly free up space every few weeks is going to be annoying... I send a ton of photos from my phone that I msg to clients and friends/family. Right now since upgrading to iOS7, I have 5.6gb of Messages!! still 19gb free... but I can see this space filling up quick.

Im surprised Apple hasnt fixed this issue even with 2 updates of iOS7
Click to expand...

This was just a bug in iOS 6. If you delete messages from the message app now they will be removed properly.

The reason this is a "thing" is because in iOS 7 we can now see the effects of that bug. Plus it only effects people that deleted messages during the time of that bug. If you didn't then it's a non issue.
 
cynics said:
I'm upset with Apple because of poor programming causing a bug in their software making it impossible to regain the space those messages used even after they are deleted. This effects iCloud and the physical space on the iOS device. Restoring from new or blundering around in the file system is the only way to fix this.

That in itself is annoying. Apple and everyone goes on and on about how great the back up system is but the slightest thing goes wrong and everyone tells you to restore from new.

If I only had true access to my iCloud I pay for even basic access I could fix this in 2 minutes.
Click to expand...

Absolutely.....I'm amazed that people are giving Apple a free pass on this. Until iOS 7 broke down the usage, a lot of people had no idea how much this big was eating up there storage. (And I'd be the majority of people who are impacted still don't know.)

If Android had a bug that resulted in 10%-30% of the space being unusuable without utilzing a 3rd party utility, restore and a set of instructions to fix it, they would be CRUCIFIED on here for it.

I wonder what the 'Genius Bar' techs at the Apple Store would recommend if someone brought it in.

Since Apple feels compelled to price gouge for memory and not offer the option to add additional storage, then I have less compassion for when they are bloated and sloppy with their programmming....and get a little ticked when they don't offer a solution for it.
 
For those that backup into iCloud, will deleting the old backups then restore from a new backup do the trick? I can't figure out how to make the space otherwise.
 
Jailbreak + iCleaner:

b39u.png
 
I just checked that deleting the messages doesn't clear the space. So even after deleting messages, it still keeps a copy and takes up space? and there is not way to clean it other than paying for a third party solution?
 
gaanee said:
I just checked that deleting the messages doesn't clear the space. So even after deleting messages, it still keeps a copy and takes up space? and there is not way to clean it other than paying for a third party solution?
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You should be able to use PhoneClean or iBackupBot for free (at least a trial perhaps) to do this at least once for free.
 
Well.. you still have to use third party software. It would be a lot easier to clean it on iPhone itself or through iTunes.
 
This thread saved me 3GB. :cool:

Thanks everyone (especially Status Fear)!


Stratus Fear said:
This. Apparently there was a bug between 6.0 an 6.1 that caused attachments to not get deleted when conversations were. It hit me too, I had 900MB left over down from 3GB after clearing all my convo history. If you want to clear all this out without losing any other data, back up your phone to iTunes and use something like iBackupBot or similar to delete everything in HomeDomain/Library/SMS and MediaDomain/Library/SMS in your backup and then erase and restore your phone with this edited backup (make sure you make a copy of the backup before you do this in case something fails with the backup editor).
Click to expand...
 
gaanee said:
Well.. you still have to use third party software. It would be a lot easier to clean it on iPhone itself or through iTunes.
Click to expand...


Yep.

First off there should be an option to turn off saving messages to a back up.

If Apple allowed finer tuning of a backup then you could weed out bugs that transfer with them.

Point in case this bug. It's annoying how "great" Apples backup method is until you have a problem. Then the first thing everyone says is "restore from new!".
 
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