iCloud iCloud is full because of messages. How to delete them?

[size0618]

Hello,

My iCloud is full because of messages taking up all the available space. I've deleted all message local threads except for a couple (from my parents just because I'd like to retain them) and deleted all photo/video attachments from messages that remain thinking that the next backup would be smaller and thus overwrite what's currently on iCloud. That doesn't seem to be accurate though as it's been a handful of days since I deleted those old message threads and my iCloud is still full and my phone hasn't backed up.

So I'm now sitting here with seemingly no way to backup my phone again now that I've eliminated all of the things that were taking up the space. So what to do? Delete all backups from iCloud and wait until they clear out (30 days?) and try to backup again?

What's the best way to approach this?

 

[0128672]

Not sure where the 30 days comes from. I can't find a reference to that in any of the Apple support documents. You can simply delete a backup from your device, which will immediately increase your iCloud storage space. Doing so will automatically turn off iCloud backup for that device, so you need to turn it back on. I hadn't done it in a while so just tested that again by deleting my iCloud backup. Immediately I had 20GB more iCloud storage.

Your other option is to buy more storage. You could increase it for a month to get things sorted and then go back to the previous tier.

If you turn off iCloud backup for some or all of your devices with current backups existing, they are retained in iCloud for 180 days.

View and manage iCloud device backups

Delete an iPhone or iPad backup to free up iCloud storage space.

support.apple.com

 

[size0618]

Not sure where the 30 days comes from. I can't find a reference to that in any of the Apple support documents. You can simply delete a backup from your device, which will immediately increase your iCloud storage space. Doing so will automatically turn off iCloud backup for that device, so you need to turn it back on. I hadn't done it in a while so just tested that again by deleting my iCloud backup. Immediately I had 20GB more iCloud storage.

Your other option is to buy more storage. You could increase it for a month to get things sorted and then go back to the previous tier.

If you turn off iCloud backup for some or all of your devices with current backups existing, they are retained in iCloud for 180 days.

View and manage iCloud device backups

Delete an iPhone or iPad backup to free up iCloud storage space.

support.apple.com

Thanks for reply and sorry for confusion. The 30 days thing is because if I go in and disable/delete messages from icloud, it says something like "you can still download for 30 days" so I guess in my mind, I'd have to wait that long for all messages on icloud to be fully purged before I could try this backup again?

 

[0128672]

Thanks for reply and sorry for confusion. The 30 days thing is because if I go in and disable/delete messages from icloud, it says something like "you can still download for 30 days" so I guess in my mind, I'd have to wait that long for all messages on icloud to be fully purged before I could try this backup again?

I want to suggest that you read through this Apple support article and read the whole thing before taking any action. One of the suggestions in the article is to delete your iCloud backups for your iphone, but there are other suggestions too. The article is more comprehensive than what I suggested so it's probably the better path so you can see the big picture and decide what you want to do and what the impacts are.

Manage your iCloud storage - Apple Support

Free up space in iCloud storage.

support.apple.com

 

[size0618]

Unfortunately that's not much help. It all sounds great and makes sense, but it doesn't work in practice (at least for me). I went through and deleted all text messages and attachments that I don't need or want yet that never freed up any space on iCloud.

 

[0128672]

Unfortunately that's not much help. It all sounds great and makes sense, but it doesn't work in practice (at least for me). I went through and deleted all text messages and attachments that I don't need or want yet that never freed up any space on iCloud.

That's only a small part of what you can do to reclaim iCloud space.

 

[size0618]

That's only a small part of what you can do to reclaim iCloud space.

Yeah I realize that, but in my case, the only thing taking up the majority of the iCloud space is messages. I don't store email, photos, voice memos, or files/folders on iCloud.

I did just completely disable/delete messages in icloud a few days ago and it looks like my total iCloud used storage dropped as a result. I've deleted basically all messages I don't want to keep and all attachments from messages and am now re-enabling messages in iCloud to see if it starts again.

 

[srgz]

Did you ever figure this out? I’m having the same problem. There are threads all over Reddit and apples own forums about this but not one single god damned solution.

The problem: ICloud shows messages using a large amount of space, but there is no way to actually delete the messages. You can manually open the messages app on your device and delete them, and they are still for some reason not deleted.

My messages shows it’s taking 800MB of space on iCloud, but there’s nothing there. If I turn off messages syncing to iCloud it removes them. But then when I re-enable it, they’re back. And on my individual device it shows messages not using any space at all.

So what’s the fix for this? Disable and delete and then wait 30 days? Lol…