Messages (Saved) swallowing up storage space -- but I'm not saving messages, so why?

[omgwut]

Hello,

I just restored my iPhone as new this morning with a new Apple ID and am setting everything up, and I just noticed that my storage is being slowly eaten up by incoming SMS/iMessage texts. This has never happened to me before, and after multiple subsequent restores as new I can confirm it continues to occur now.

In Settings > General > Usage > Messages, it reads "Messages (Saved)" with a data amount next to it. It shouldn't even be saving my messages period, because I delete every one after I read it -- it should just read 0KB -- but its climbing by a few hundred KB (really?) for every single message I receive and delete. I sent myself and deleted a few messages saying nothing more than "test" in between checking the Settings app, and its at 1.6MB now. Swiping it does nothing, there's no option to delete it.

I searched and found some other people with this problem, but I cannot find any solid answers for a fix. Someone on the Apple Support forums claimed it swallowed up almost a hundred GB before forcing them to restore as new and lose their data just to shrink it. I'm not looking for a reactionary measure like that, I want to know why the hell there's a cache of messages being kept on my phone when I have deleted them all in the first place and how to stop it from collecting more. Is this a bug that's been around for a while, or is it by design? Is there a solution anyone knows about?

I'd greatly appreciate anyone's knowledge and time, thanks!

 

[macrumors4444]

me too...

I have same issue as omgwut - can anyone provide information/solution?
Thanks!

 

[C DM]

Possibly something saved somewhere. That said, a few hundred KB, or a few MB is practically nothing, even for phones without much space.

 

[macrumors4444]

didnt work

I have 13.6GB for messages with only hardly any text messages on phone. I took recommendation from several posts on macrumors to restored my iphone, then restore backup - same amt came back - 13.6GB. The backup is to my computer, does this mean the backups have saved old texts? If so, how do I delete those from my backup?
Thanks in advance! This is frustrating!

 

[Xenomorph]

Old texts (SMS, MMS, and iMessage) that were sent or received from back in iOS 6.0.x are saved as part of the backup.

If you've ever had iOS 6.0.x on your device, only a full restore without restoring from backup is the only way to clean out the old messages.

For iOS 6.1 and newer (including everything up to iOS 7.1.2) does not save messages in the backup. A restore + Restore from Backup should be enough to clean it out.

If there are large files being saved in your backup, you need to take a look at the files themselves (sort by size) in the iTunes backup folder to figure out what they are.

 

[macrumors4444]

Xenomorph - you are my hero!!!!! THANK you for some great info!!
One last question - where do I find the itunes backup files - i tried searching all of windows explorer for "itunes backup", yet came back no results found.

Thanks again!

 

[Nolander07]

I restored my phone from iCloud backup and that fixed the problem. No need to set everything up again either.