All Devices Images in iMesssage in iCloud

[ID_Field_Blank]

Hello

Please can someone help me understand iMessages in iCloud? It's driving me nuts - especailly photos and attachments.

My understanding of it...

1. Once it's enabled it syncs all chats and media to any Apple device logged into the same icloud account
2. This includes media / attachments / links.
3. If I delete a photo from my iPhone it SHOULD be deleted from my iPad / Mac AND the iCloud

BUT for some reason not all the media within an inline chat appears on my device under the info panel for the contact and at the bottom of that panel it may say '500 images in iCloud' (there is an option to download these).

So the question I have is how do I view / keep the images in iCloud and delete the junk taking up sapce in my iCloud storage.

Follow up question. If I delete it from a chat will it also delete it from my photo library?

 

[inkahauts]

First deleting an image in messages has zero affect on anything in your photo library, so if you saved that same photo to your photo library it will still be there. They are completely separate.

As for images in messages it should be the same everywhere but maybe older images where not updated everywhere if they where from before you enabled messages in the cloud. What’s it actually look like in the info for the messages? Is it boxes without a picture?

 

[ID_Field_Blank]

Sorry for the delayed response - have been under the weather.

understood about photo album, thanks.

I have received a picture from my brother in past week. it has arrived in both my iPad and iPhone and is in the message chat. On my iPad it shows up under ’details’ on my iPhone it doesn’t (see pictures). Both iPad and iPhone fully up to date.

On other chats it seems to be a random selection of pics under ’details’ with a button below that says Something like ‘XXX more photos in iCloud, click to download’. I don’t want to download the 1000s of junk pictures (you know the kind...)so how do I see them / delete them? They’re just taking up space in iCloud with no way of accessing as far as I can see so any help is appreciated.

 

[Le Big Mac]

Having this problem as well. Anyone with a solution?

 

[ID_Field_Blank]

Still no solution that is easy to understand and the Apple support article isn’t that helpful - the guidance just doesn’t work.

Recently I tried again on this to clear out some space in iCloud as follows.

1. opened up chat with wife
2. Went to details section
3. Clicked the xxx in download button
4. Let them all download (48 wouldn’t download).
5. Went through and selected a load to delete
6.Pressed delete

Issues
1. A random selection of the images I had selected deleted
2. It didn’t mirror on my ipad
3. Some items won’t delete at all
4. Some items won’t download
5. Some items appear to be thumbnails but can’t be cleared / deleted

I think a little iCloud space cleared but it was so difficult to tell. Thinking of disabling iMessage in the cloud because this is ridiculous.

I think the process going forward will be:

1. Download EVERYTHING to a single device.
2. Log out of iMessage on other devices.
3. Delete excess media on that’s single device
4. Renewable iMessage in iCloud
5. Log back into other devices

My concern here is that I don’t think iMessage in the cloud uploads historic info but could be wrong. Any insight would be appreciated.

Follow up question, if I delete all the messages on my iPhone will this delete them from the cloud too?

Apple REALLY need a web portal to manage iMessage in the cloud. It’s impossible to see what is taking up the space.

 

[contacos]

I deactivated it because it was and still is a mess unfortunately

it shows X photos in the messaging app but a totally different amount in iPhone > General > storage and when I check iCloud, again, completely different usage.

for instance, I would delete all images from > general storage but messages itself still has photos when I check any conversation while iCloud shows 10 kbs usage even tho it says 2 GB when I click on it

 

[Le Big Mac]

Been playing with this a bit more, but still trying to sort out.

1) For conversations that go back a while it appears to sync all photos even though you may have deleted those a while ago (or thought you did) if it's on any device anywhere. A lot of older photos (which is the memory hog) kept showing up.
2) If you delete items either on your iOS device or in Messages on your mac (using details) the deletion isn't instantaneous. They still show there until you close details and go back in (at least in Mojave). So if you have a lot of photos and batch delete it may look like they're still there. On iOS devices it sometimes doesn't actually delete.
3) They do eventually delete and show some additional space in memory - not clear how long that takes - seems to be a number of hours.