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How to Delete All Apple Messages

While there is no way to delete all of your Apple Messages conversations at once, there are a couple of work-arounds to try to save time and storage space. You can delete messages quickly using a hot key combination on your Mac and...

Author: Kareem Winters2 minutes read
Table of Contents
Method 1 of 2:

Deleting on your iPhone or iPad

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    Tap the Settings icon. You can delete a lot of old messages at once by changing your Message History settings, then deleting your current conversations.
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    Tap Messages. You will have to scroll down on the menu screen to find it.
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    Tap Keep Messages. It's located under "Message History."
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    Tap 30 Days.
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    Tap Delete. Doing so will delete all messages and message attachments that are older than 30 days.
    1. This may not delete all of your messages.
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    Tap the Messages icon from your home screen.
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    Tap Edit. It's located in the top left corner of the screen. Doing so will make round radio buttons appear next to each conversation.
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    Tap the radio button next to each conversation. Select all the conversations you wish to delete.
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    Tap Delete. Doing so will delete all the selected conversations at once.
Method 2 of 2:

Deleting on your Mac

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    Open the Messages app.
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    Click on the first chat thread. You will be deleting everything below the first chat thread you select.
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    Press and hold ⌥ Option + ⌘ Command.
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    Press Delete repeatedly. Doing so will delete each conversation quickly, bypassing the confirmation pop-up.
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    Press ⌘ Command+⇧ Shift+G. Doing so will bring up the "Go To Folder" window.
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    Type in "~/Library/Messages/."
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    Move the Chat files to the trash. The chat files appear as "chat.db," "chat.db-shm," and "chat.db-wal."
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    Re-launch the Messages app. Your chat history will be empty.
    1. Deleting the chat files does not delete attachments. To remove attachments, follow the same steps, but substitute ~/Library/Messages/' for ~/Library/Messages/Attachments/.

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