Device keeps filling storage with iCloud messages unecessarily

[Dylan33x]

This is happening to a friend of mine for the second time, can't find a solution.

She went from a 256 iPhone where she was using 60GB total storage to a 128GB iPhone. she has somewhere over 100GB of messages/attachments stored in iCloud. Some months ago when she initially did this, the phone downloaded as much as it could until the space was completely full. To the point where the phone would function correctly.

After some iCloud restores (where other glitches occurred) this essentially was fixed, and the phone downloaded maybe 10-20GB and stayed there.

Now, the phone has suddenly started doing this again, to the point where she can't even send me a screenshot over iMessages.

In googling this, I'm having trouble using differentiating terms as most people are (understandably) confused about either their local messages storage, or why so much iCloud storage is being used. But rarely am I finding posts on this specific issue.

The few that I've found don't have many proposed solutions, except for another restore. Obviously willing to do that, but seeing if anyone else has had this issue.

I've tried the usual suspects such as restarting, hard resetting, plugging in and leaving overnight, etc.


Lastly, from what I can tell this seems to be an iOS17 issue for the most part. My friend had to use an SE of mine for a few weeks as a loaner, and her iCloud restore screwed the phone completely, filling up the storage to the point where the phone was glitchy and wouldn't work at all. We restored twice and had the same outcome.

Any ideas?

 

[TonyC28]

I think I'm having a similar issue with my wife's iPhone 13 Pro. On my 13 Pro, I have 2.1 GB of Messages taking up space. She has 135 GB of Messages. I only checked because I'm trying to see how much storage we need on new phones. We both have iCloud Messages turned on, which I thought would store some of it in the cloud and not on device, but I guess that's wrong. Is there some way to force them to be stored in iCloud versus on the iPhone? And yea, I know, she needs to clean some of it up.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Suggestion: close messages when chats are done. Text messages should not be an ongoing record of every interaction ever had. If there are pictures/vids to keep, save pictures/vids to Photos app. Else, swipe and delete messages. Then start a new chat with anyone when its time to text them again.

If there is some potentially legal (or just "I want") reason to have a written record of all texts ever exchanged, open Messages on a Mac and print the whole conversation as a PDF file. Then close the conversation and let the PDF be the written historical record to date.

More simply: treat texting like making phone calls...

• start a "call" (start text),
• have a "call" (text chat a full conversation),
• end a "call" (swipe to delete conversation).

Instead of hanging up, one swipes to delete the chat. When one wants to chat again, start a new text message.

So many people keep text chats open forever and it just hogs up enormous iCloud space and simply keeps accumulating more and more space... leading to having to pay forever rent for more & more iCloud space. Close conversations and then open new ones for future text chats and Messages will hardly eat up any space at all in iCloud.

Same with email: process email like one processes snail mail. Most ends up in trash. A few may be long-term keepers (but get stored somewhere, not just left in "inbox" forever). My own rule is that inbox can never have more than 100 email messages in it. If it does, it becomes priority one to process inbox email back down to well below 100.

As a result of both personal "policies," mail + messages takes up about 15% of my iCloud space at any given time... which is the FREE block of iCloud space (5GB). And I'm running a business with my Macs & iDevices with much business communication every day.

I realize this thread may be identifying a BUG(s) in Apple OS's related to Messages... but I bet a lot of the problem could be addressed by processing the text messages and then closing the conversations. Get total text messages DOWN from "over 100GB" to maybe 200-300MB on average... and keep it there by ending text sessions when a chat is done and then starting a new chat next time.