The iCloud Labor-Hamsters only work when you're sleeping. And the devices are all plugged in, charging, and on WiFi.
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Messages in iCloud changed from Forever to 1 year but still taking up same space.
- Thread starter macrlz9
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I did a test. Deleted a thread in iMessages on my phone. A thread I knew had at least 7gb of photos and vids. I deleted the thread Wednesday night. This morning (Saturday) it showed removed from my iCloud storage for iMessages.
LOL iMessage storage went back to its old size today. Went from 11GB to almost 30GB. <shrug>.
Oh well. I can only imagine how frustrating this would be with 300GB.
Oh well. I can only imagine how frustrating this would be with 300GB.
Wow. Mine is hanging in there @ 160GB still 🤞
I put this on the back burner for now because I’m not ok with loosing less than a year and now that I got about 150GB storage back, I don’t need to disable iCloud messages just yet…
Hoping higher iCloud storage options become available before it fills again.
I wish Messages had better iCloud management on macOS. There were like 40 GB of iMessages on my wife's MacBook Air so I deleted a whole bunch of her attachments and she still has 20 GB of data. About This Mac --> Storage says only about 5 GB more stuff can be deleted.
She wants her iPhone to keep her Messages forever which is fine. However, if I change just her MacBook to 1 year, will it delete the older iMessages just on her MacBook? That would save space on her 128 GB SSD. I could get her a bigger SSD, but that's just addressing the symptom, not the underlying problem, which Apple's annoying Messages management on the Mac.
She wants her iPhone to keep her Messages forever which is fine. However, if I change just her MacBook to 1 year, will it delete the older iMessages just on her MacBook? That would save space on her 128 GB SSD. I could get her a bigger SSD, but that's just addressing the symptom, not the underlying problem, which Apple's annoying Messages management on the Mac.
Agree 100% Most of this is all a mystery, however, I will say the only thing I do know is if you change the "Keep messages for" setting on 1 device, it changes it on all...
So if I change it to 1 year on the Mac, it will change it to 1 year on the iPhone?
Are you sure? When I select 1 year on the Mac, it says it will erase anything older on the device, but it doesn't say that it would be for all devices. (I haven't confirmed the change yet. That's the message that pops up before you confirm the change.)
Yep I’m sure. I get that the wording is ambiguous or even misleading but I found out when I changed this setting intending to change it on every device and found it was already changed for me. Here's a video to show it happens in real time.
Thanks. That's irritating. 
What happens if I delete the attachments on the Mac? Do they get deleted everywhere, or just on the Mac? Cuz I've already deleted something like 20 GB worth.
What happens if I delete the attachments on the Mac? Do they get deleted everywhere, or just on the Mac? Cuz I've already deleted something like 20 GB worth.
Don’t know exactly. I deleted large videos from iPhone and iPad under Settings > General > iPhone/iPad Storage (I can’t remember if I did on macOS) and eventually the iCloud storage used went down… don’t know what triggered it because after changing the “keep messages for” setting from forever to 1 year, there was no change even after a few days.Thanks. That's irritating.
What happens if I delete the attachments on the Mac? Do they get deleted everywhere, or just on the Mac? Cuz I've already deleted something like 20 GB worth.
Hmm... I may just have to get a bigger drive for her then, but I can see it happening again later on. Her MacBook Air 2017 has a replaceable SSD.
I landed on this forum with the same issue. I have about 55 GB of photos. I tried changing settings to 1 year before coming here. That was only yesterday. If my device behavior is the same, I guess I gotta wait a few days for this to happen (and it seems up to 30 days maybe).
Upgraded her 128 GB drive to a 256 GB drive. I found an inexpensive original OEM Apple Samsung drive locally, pulled from a 2015 MBP. It's the exact SSUBX model line that shipped with this MBA (so I won't have to worry about weird incompatibilities that crop up with 3rd party NVMe drives).
Let's see how long it takes for this one to fill up with junk now.
This is something that has my eye on it. I have a friend who is in family iMessage groups with hundreds of gigabytes of photos/videos. I know my own are exploding in size. My attempt to remove the threads seemed to mostly impact local storage only.Upgraded her 128 GB drive to a 256 GB drive. I found an inexpensive original OEM Apple Samsung drive locally, pulled from a 2015 MBP. It's the exact SSUBX model line that shipped with this MBA (so I won't have to worry about weird incompatibilities that crop up with 3rd party NVMe drives).
Let's see how long it takes for this one to fill up with junk now.
On my Mac, I went into Settings —> Storage and in iMessage I removed 26GB of photos/videos but it only affected local storage. Lol.
Hopefully iMessage management improves as time goes on. 30GB is manageable for me but it grows faster and faster - not just for me but for the members in my family plan too. We’re almost at 600GB and growing faster than ever.
Holy crap! 600 GB. That's insane.
In contrast, it seems to be managed much better on iOS/iPadOS. Her 128 GB iPhone is just half full, and that includes a whole bunch of recent pictures locally stored on the iPhone. Similarly, my 64 GB iPad Pro has no problem with space. If iMessage on macOS was managed as well as iMessage on iOS, that'd solve a lot of our problems. There's still the issue of other garbage in "System Data", but iMessage is one of the worst offenders.
It's not just me! Mine does same thing! LOL.
I have 2 hilariously ridiculous examples:
1) Under “Top Conversations”, the one taking up the most space is -855.7MB (Yes, it takes up NEGATIVE MB)
2) Under ”Videos”, the total storage used is 35.78GB, however, the detail screen only shows a handful of MB taken up. I deleted TONS of media… anything over 100MB.
🤷🏻♂️
1) Under “Top Conversations”, the one taking up the most space is -855.7MB (Yes, it takes up NEGATIVE MB)
2) Under ”Videos”, the total storage used is 35.78GB, however, the detail screen only shows a handful of MB taken up. I deleted TONS of media… anything over 100MB.
🤷🏻♂️
Attachments
Same here. I spent 15-20 mins going through and wiping all those out - that's when my overall iMessage size dropped after a few days then... a week later went back to normal size. And yes, they don't add up for me either.
And some screens, like Fred - are blank. lol.
Despite the fact that on this "new" 256 GB drive there is 35 GB worth of Photos data downloaded from iCloud, there is still less storage usage on this machine than on her previous 128 GB drive. The reason for this is that Messages is currently under 11 GB after several days of automatic syncing, and the System Data group is conspicuously absent from the Manage Storage screen. So, Messages is a reasonable size, and System Data doesn't have a whole bunch of junk in it after the Monterey re-install.Upgraded her 128 GB drive to a 256 GB drive. I found an inexpensive original OEM Apple Samsung drive locally, pulled from a 2015 MBP. It's the exact SSUBX model line that shipped with this MBA (so I won't have to worry about weird incompatibilities that crop up with 3rd party NVMe drives).
Let's see how long it takes for this one to fill up with junk now.
I checked her Messages files and she has several 1 GB videos in there that were automatically downloaded, so that 11 GB is appropriate.
BTW, IIRC, many years ago I don't think iMessage allowed 1 GB videos, but I noticed a couple of years ago that they started allowing it.
Also finding myself in this predicament. I have 50GB of Messages storage in iCloud and only a few GB left of my 200GB iCloud space.
I've set Keep Messages to Forever and really want to keep it that way as I have years of texts that are occasionally worth going back to. Would much prefer to just delete all attachments since that's what takes up space anyway. The "Review Large Attachments" feature of Settings appears to have been removed, however.
I went and deleted a few attachments from the macOS Settings side as mentioned above but have yet to see the iCloud storage go down... can anyone else confirm if this will work eventually?
I guess my only other option would be to go into each thread individually and delete attachments there. From what people have said that seems to work?
Just fyi, yesterday, my iMessages went from 20GB (growing from 17GB from OCT 14 to Nov 17) to 1.5GB. POOF. lol.
(I had taken no actions to do anything to iMessages since Oct 14). Heh. Very interesting.
Seems to work but takes 30+ days. I went through on my Macs and wiped out 30+GB of attachments and it took just over a month for all that data to get wiped out on iCloud. It LOOKS LIKE I still have all my texts from the last handful of years (text texts) on all my devices.
IMO this area could use a huge improvement.