How to Stop iMessage from Filling Up iPhone and iCloud Storage

If you use iMessage regularly, data such as text messages, voice recordings, photos, videos, GIFs, and many other attachments will be stored on your device. Over time, iMessage gradually becomes the app that takes up the most space on your device. So here's how to prevent your storage from filling up when using iMessage.

How to Free Up iMessage Storage on iPhone and iPad

Step 1: Delete iMessage attachments

To check how much space iMessage is taking up on your iPhone, visit:

Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Messages .

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If you haven't deleted unwanted attachments in a while, you may find tens of gigabytes (GB) of iMessage data taking up space. Here, Messages' Documents section is only a few dozen MB.

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If you're ready to delete the entire conversation, do the following:

Tap Top Conversations .
Click Edit in the upper right corner.
Select the conversations you want to delete, then tap the trash icon in the upper right corner.

This is the quickest way to free up space, but it can get you kicked out of iMessage chat groups. If you do this, you may have to ask people to invite you back to the group.

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Delete attachments by type

To delete attachments more selectively, go to:

Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Messages .

Here you can see each type of attachment like:

Image
Video
GIFs & Stickers
Other

Tap each item, then tap Edit, select the files you don't need, and delete them using the trash icon.

How to Stop iMessage from Taking Up iPhone Storage

If left unchecked, iMessage can continue to accumulate junk data. Take these precautions:

Automatically delete old messages

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Go to Settings > Messages, then go to Message History and tap Keep Messages. Here, you can change it from Forever to 30 days or 1 year. This will automatically delete messages and attachments older than the time period you choose.

For voice messages, in the same settings page, tap Expires and select After 2 minutes to automatically delete unnecessary voice recordings.

Reduce image quality sent via iMessage

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Scroll to the bottom of the Messages Settings page and turn on Low-quality Photo Mode. This option reduces the size of photos you send and receive via iMessage. However, photos may appear blurry and hard to read if they're screenshots that contain text.

Turn off SMS forwarding between Apple devices

If you don't want SMS messages to automatically appear on all your Apple devices, go to:

Settings > Messages > SMS Forwarding , then turn off message forwarding to unnecessary devices. Note: This doesn't affect iMessages.

How to reduce iMessage storage on iCloud

iCloud storage is also a big issue. If you find that iMessage is taking up too much iCloud space, here's what you can do:

Turn off iMessage sync with iCloud

On your iPhone or iPad, go to Settings > [Your Name] > iCloud.

Tap Messages, then turn off "Use on this iPhone."

Note: This will remove messages from iCloud and stop syncing messages between Apple devices.

Isabella Humphrey

Update 26 May 2025

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