Messages still taking up 22gb of storage after deleting attachments

[Flopstar]

I recently got a new MBA and turned on messages in iCloud in order to have all of my conversations load. This caused all of my attachments to download, which was annoying, so I deleted them from the Library > Messages > Attachments folder. This cleared up a bunch of storage (27gb) from the "other" section of storage, but the "messages" section of storage still shows 22gb being used. The Library > Messages folder is now only 1.5gb, and I can't seem to find where this 22gb exists, even with omnidisksweeper. Any ideas?

edit: also want to note that omnidisksweeper shows 27.6gb of used space on my computer once sweeping, but about my mac shows 38.1

 

[usagora]

I recently got a new MBA and turned on messages in iCloud in order to have all of my conversations load. This caused all of my attachments to download, which was annoying, so I deleted them from the Library > Messages > Attachments folder. This cleared up a bunch of storage (27gb) from the "other" section of storage, but the "messages" section of storage still shows 22gb being used. The Library > Messages folder is now only 1.5gb, and I can't seem to find where this 22gb exists, even with omnidisksweeper. Any ideas?

edit: also want to note that omnidisksweeper shows 27.6gb of used space on my computer once sweeping, but about my mac shows 38.1

I'm not sure if Messages is like Time Machine, where you need to delete things through the app itself (instead of manually through Finder) or else things go haywire. The only way I've deleted attachments before has been to right-click them in the actual message and then click "Delete..."

Maybe turn off Messages in iCloud and then back on again, then delete your attachments through Messages itself.

If you click the "i" at the top right of the Messages app window, it will show you all attachments for the given conversation. You can then hold down Shift or CMD and click on multiple attachments to select them for deletion.

 

[Flopstar]

I'm not sure if Messages is like Time Machine, where you need to delete things through the app itself (instead of manually through Finder) or else things go haywire. The only way I've deleted attachments before has been to right-click them in the actual message and then click "Delete..."

Maybe turn off Messages in iCloud and then back on again, then delete your attachments through Messages itself.

If you click the "i" at the top right of the Messages app window, it will show you all attachments for the given conversation. You can then hold down Shift or CMD and click on multiple attachments to select them for deletion.

When I look on the attachments for conversations, it doesn't show anything except for ones I've received since I deleted them from finder. If I look at an old conversation, there's just a download prompt where the attachment would be, so they were deleted. What's weird is that when I deleted them, they disappeared from Other storage but not Messages, which implies there were duplicates or something? I wonder if I should just reset the computer entirely and not use Messages in iCloud. After all, I do have copies on my phone, so I wouldn't be losing the attachments entirely.

 

[chscag]

What happens if you sign out of iCloud? It sounds like iCloud is duplicating the messages and attachments to your MBA.

 

[Flopstar]

What happens if you sign out of iCloud? It sounds like iCloud is duplicating the messages and attachments to your MBA.

I don't feel like it's duplicating things, because there are no attachments on my MBA anymore. It just seems like the storage calculation is wrong somehow. I would try signing out, but it seems risky that it may try to download them yet again when I sign back in and clog things up again.

When I run omnidisksweeper, I can find no big folders that contain 22gb of attachments, so can I just assume that Spotlight categorized my storage incorrectly?

Edit: I feel like the storage is categorized wrong, and there's not actually 22gb of messages but something else. I have around 210gb available, which is about normal for a new MBA out of the box according to other repots on the internet, especially since I have a few apps installed (I remember it being closer to 215 out of the box). So it should be fine?