Leave room for the more important stuff.
Our iPhones are amazing for so many things. Snapping our best memories, staying in touch with our nearest and dearest, keeping up to date with our socials and everything in between.
One thing all iPhone users universally agree is frustrating is that little pop up that appears every so often, telling us that our iCloud Storage is full.
The obvious action here, and one we all seem to take, is to just go on a mad deleting spree. Photos, videos and apps are the first to go, but our iMessages never spring to mind.
It turns out they actually use a whole lot of storage space on your iPhone and we’re here to tell you how you can prevent this happening.
Make room iMessage.
We use iMessage every day and often we include hefty sized photos, videos and various other attachments.
There is such thing as a message hoarder, I should know I am one. I love keeping old conversations to read back through or to zone back in on when I want to look at the shared photos.
Deleting entire threads is somewhat sad and what’s even worse is manually deleting endless attachments in our settings.
Before you get started, it’s worth noting that the method we’re going to share, works better if you’re mobile is running iOS 15.
First things first, you’re going to want to check how much space iMessage is taking up on your iPhone.
1) Head to Settings.
2) Tap General.
3) Select iPhone Storage.
4) Tap Messages.
If you’re not a message hoarder, you’re in a great position.
1) Select Top Conversations.
2) Hit the Edit button.
3) Select the conversations you want to delete.
4) Tap the Trash icon.
This will delete a whole bunch of conversations at once, but we’ve got handy tips that offer a more cautious method of clearing your iMessage storage out.
1) Head to Settings.
2) Tap General.
3) Go to iPhone Storage.
4) Tap Messages.
When you get to this stage, you’ll be able to clearly see each type of attachment. Say you want to delete conversations with large videos in, you can filter it to just show video attachments.
From here you’ll be able to select the edit button and delete all the videos you don’t want. This process is the same for photos, GIFs and any stickers too.
If you want to save yourself this time and effort in the future, there are some things you can do.
1) Head to Settings.
2) Tap Messages.
3) Under Message History, select Keep Messages.
4) Change this setting to suit: forever, 30 days or 1 year.
If you want to skip out the middle man all together and prevent your iMessages from appearing in your iCloud storage, here’s a few steps for this too.
1) Head to Settings.
2) Select your name at the top.
3) Tap iCloud.
4) Toggle disable Messages.
This will stop your messages syncing to your iCloud across all your Apple devices and although it seems extreme, it’s the most practical way of unclogging your storage.
Try it for yourself.
The root of all your storage problems could be rooted in your iMessage content. These handy methods will have you sorted in no time.
You can test all of this out on your current iPhone or treat yourself to a new one. We’ve got unmissable prices on the best from Apple, including the latest iPhone 13.
