How To Manage Messages On Iphone

iPhone tips and tricks: How to automatically delete old messages to free up space on iPhone, iPad

If your iPhone or iPad is running out of storage space, the most likely cause can be your bloated Messages app. Text messages, photos, videos, gifs, and audio notes combined can take up a few gigabytes of space in no time. And you may not even realize it, as your iPhone or iPad are set to store every message you send or receive forever – by default.

To make matters worse, the same amount of storage is wasted on your iCloud account when you back up your device – not a good thing if you are on a free iCloud plan with a 5G storage limit.

Luckily, since iOS 8, you can limit how long you want your messages stored on your iPhone or iPad. So, unless there is a mission-critical reason for you to hang on to old messages, deleting them automatically can free up tons of space on your iPhone or iPad – leaving more space for that cool app you just found.

First, take a look at just how much space you messages app is hogging and then configure the messages app to auto-delete old messages.

Check how much space old messages take up on your iPhone, iPad

Launch theSettings app and tap onGeneral.
ChooseStorage & iCloud Usage.
Tap onManage Storage in theStorage section.
Scroll to the Messages app to see how much storage old messages are taking up.

Changes are a few gigabytes of storage are being wasted on old messages. You can delete old messages manually from within the Messages app or, the easy option is to set up the app to automatically delete older messages so that you never have to worry about it again.

How to automatically delete old messages on iPhone, iPad

To have old messages automatically deleted from your iPhone or iPad, follow these steps:

Launch theSettings app and chooseMessages.
Scroll down to the Message History section and tap onKeep Messages.
Note Forever is ticked by default. Choose either30 days or1 year instead.
A popup message will ask you to confirm that you want to delete older messages.
Tap Delete. Note you cannot undo this action.

If you go back to the previous section and check how much space old messages are taking up now, you should see a significant drop in wasted storage space.

Clearing out old messages from your iPhone and iPad is the simplest way to free up storage but there are four more tips and tricks for freeing up space on your iPhone.

Image credit: Jan Persiel, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0

A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Show your support for our mission by joining our Cube Club and Cube Event Community of experts. Join the community that includes Amazon Web Services and Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger and many more luminaries and experts.