iCloud Messages and iCloud management

[mossback]

I have an imac, macbook, iphone and several ipads. On all of them I am signed in with my Apple ID and iCloud account. I have 50GB of storage on iCloud and ~45GB are messages. I like to keep messages forever, as a kind of database and archive. Long before iCloud I had messages on my phone and on the macs and all was well. I don't specifically remember ever enabling messages on iCloud, but they are and apparently have been for some time. I don't want to pay for increased storage above 50GB. I also don't care about syncing messages on all my devices.

At this point what I'd like to do is keep the messages I've always had on my phone and imac but delete them from icloud only. Reading various support articles from Apple about messages and icloud I can't seem to find any specific information about achieving this. My hope would be to revert back to a pre-icloud configuration and, in the process, ensure that no messages are deleted from my macs or phone.

Is this possible and, if so, any insights or advice would be truly appreciated.

 

[mossback]

To follow up on this, it is simply a matter of disabling and deleting messages from iCloud. All messages remain on your devices. My confusion was due to the wording of several warning messages which had me concerned the process would also delete the data on each device.

 

[breakfast]

Aren't iMessages somehow stored "in the Cloud" anyways? Like somewhere on Apple servers and not just on your device?

Besides, I really don't grasp what the "iMessges in iCloud"-option/setting/switch actually really does...?! What exactly is the difference or benefit when enabling it - from a normal user's perspective? :dunno:

Thanks