Messages - delete photos and they return

[HallStevenson]

A while back, I max'd out my iCloud storage (surprise, surprise) but it was only from Messages/iMessage. I do have iMessages in iCloud enabled and have my iPhone and my MBA M2 set up with this. At first, I simply changed the message retention from "Forever" to "1 year" but it wasn't enough. Next, I went conversation by conversation, tapped the contact, then "Photos - See all" and started manually deleting photos. I would delete photos but they wouldn't disappear or what I'm seeing now, I can delete a photo and it returns. Can't say how quickly but I know I'm not crazy about this now. There's (2) photos, for example, of Christmas gifts for one of our kids that my wife and I sent back and forth. Another one is a kitchen light that I know I deleted, but it's the list of photos again.

Where are these coming from ? Why do they keep coming back and how do I stop this ? My money says it's related to iCloud message syncing....

 

[cthompson94]

What about if you go Settings->General->iPhone Storage->Messages->Review Large Attachments and deleting from there

 

[mpavilion]

This happened to me too, recently, when I tried to delete a bunch of photos in messages to stay under the iCloud storage cap.

 

[contacos]

Same here and it has been happening to me for YEARS

I explained it here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/icloud-message-usage-makes-no-sense.2376677/

 

[HallStevenson]

Same here and it has been happening to me for YEARS

I explained it here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/icloud-message-usage-makes-no-sense.2376677/

Sounds sooooo familiar !! Funny part, like you also mention in your thread, is the different values of space being used. None of it makes sense or agrees with the other menus/screens.

I need to check if the pictures of the Christmas gifts that I mentioned in my OP have returned to the conversation photos with my wife.... Nope, they haven't returned but the picture of the kitchen light has !! The light, by the way, is one my wife found on a store's website and I went to the store to get. Let me delete it once again.