iPhone Changed iMessage from keeping iMessages forever to 1 year. How long does it take to purge old messages?

[EugW]

I was trying to backup my wife's iPhone, and found out she has almost 53 GB used by iMessage alone. She's been keeping her iMessages forever, but is fine to keep them just one year. So I changed it to one year, but she still has the same 53 GB used.

Does iMessage take a long time to purge the old messages, or is there something extra I need to do? I notice that some of the attachments listed there are several years old. Also, I scrolled through some of the conversations and still find the several year old messages there.

 

[Kendo]

You could just delete the photos/videos of the largest size to keep the messages but purge all the files taking up all those GB.

 

[EugW]

It says she has 8+ GB photos and 2+ GB videos in iMessage. So what is responsible for all the rest of the data used? When she gets back with her phone, I can post a screengrab.

 

[EugW]

Reactivated that 1 year setting, and then turned out Cloud support for Messages, and now instead of 53 GB, now Messages states it uses 11 GB. I didn't gain 42 GB of space back though. It saved me about 15 GB on the phone. So somewhere that number was just wrong, but at least I gained 15 GB back.