Messages in iCloud not saving local space?

[vjl323]

Hi all.

Back in November I turned Messages on for iCloud storage. I had about 60GB of Messages on my iPhone. After over 2 weeks of the messages uploading to iCloud, they finally appears in iCloud. Today they take up 97.3GB. But on my phone, none of the 60GB has been removed. My entire purpose for enabling Messages for iCloud was to save local storage, but as of today, my iPhone 12 mini [256GB model] has 66.43GB of local messages. What can I do to gain the local storage back? If I delete conversations in the Messages app, they delete on iCloud. And even though the iPhone states there is 66.43GB of Messages, the Top Conversations take up 73.56GB of space, which makes no sense [this is after, in December, I deleted some large video attachments].

Help? I need to free up space asap. Thanks!

 

[Hrududu]

I'm interested in this too, as I am low on space on my phone, but don't want to delete conversations and attachments. If I am missing the "either/or" storage option with iCloud vs the "both or none" that would be nice. I have no real desire to occupy space on both, kinda defeats the purpose.

 

[vjl323]

I'm interested in this too, as I am low on space on my phone, but don't want to delete conversations and attachments. If I am missing the "either/or" storage option with iCloud vs the "both or none" that would be nice. I have no real desire to occupy space on both, kinda defeats the purpose.

Have you signed out of iCloud and back in? I was thinking of doing that, but I wasn't sure if that would automatically fix the issue, and wondered if it might cause more issues!

 

[Hrududu]

Have you signed out of iCloud and back in? I was thinking of doing that, but I wasn't sure if that would automatically fix the issue, and wondered if it might cause more issues!

I Haven't. Might not be a bad option though. Might free up the space until loading a conversation and it then tries to re-dowload the attachments.

 

[lostless]

The phone will keep everything local until it needs space and will automatically erase locally. Same with icloud photos. IOS does this all in the background and you have no choice what gets removed locally. It typically will erase the older items first. so keep using your phone normally and if someday you need room for a large video or whatever, your phone will clear local messages and photos (and I think even files in the cloud) for you.
Personal experience. I noticed my photos I just took would go to the cloud for no reason after a couple days and my entire photo album locally was like a few hundred megabytes. My phone was never full (or so I thoght). Well it was, somehow IOS was bugging out and filling my phone with log files (had to restore), but it was doing the auto erase of my messages and photos.

 

[vjl323]

The phone will keep everything local until it needs space and will automatically erase locally. Same with icloud photos. IOS does this all in the background and you have no choice what gets removed locally.

I’ve been down to less than 200MB free on my 256GB iPhone 12 mini and still had 60+ GB of local messages. It took over two weeks for them to upload to iCloud in November. And yet the Messages still grows. I’ve had issues taking photos because iOS says it can’t store them. So I download more photos to my Mac [I don’t use iCloud photos. Just photo stream]. The messages are my biggest log jam right now. I do currently have 12GB free but if I make some 4K videos that space is filled up fast and Messages doesn’t give anything back

 

[lostless]

maybe it does the clean up at night when the phone is on a charger. I’m not quite sure how it works. All I know is that it removed stuff at some point during my ordeal. And every new phone I get just downloads the bare minimum on my messages. Maybe try a restore of you have a backup?

 

[vjl323]

maybe it does the clean up at night when the phone is on a charger. I’m not quite sure how it works. All I know is that it removed stuff at some point during my ordeal. And every new phone I get just downloads the bare minimum on my messages. Maybe try a restore of you have a backup?

I use iMazing to backup and though I’ve been able to restore certain apps I’ve not been able to do a full device restore. Still running macOS 10.13. I need to really clean things up though as I leave in a month to spend 6 months hiking the Appalachian Trail and my phone being clogged up isn’t something I want to deal with while out there!

 

[lostless]

I use iMazing to backup and though I’ve been able to restore certain apps I’ve not been able to do a full device restore. Still running macOS 10.13. I need to really clean things up though as I leave in a month to spend 6 months hiking the Appalachian Trail and my phone being clogged up isn’t something I want to deal with while out there!

This is why an iCloud back up is so nice for photos and messages and phone backup. A restore is not a big deal. You reset your phone, log into your apple ID and your phone will go right back to the way it was. It won't download all your photos and messages physically to your phone, but will function as if its all there and download when needed.
But thats if you want to pay for the iCloud storage or trust apple with all that data of yours.

 

[vjl323]

This is why an iCloud back up is so nice for photos and messages and phone backup. A restore is not a big deal. You reset your phone, log into your apple ID and your phone will go right back to the way it was. It won't download all your photos and messages physically to your phone, but will function as if its all there and download when needed.
But thats if you want to pay for the iCloud storage or trust apple with all that data of yours.

Yeah I have the 2TB plan but I like keeping local backups since apple health data can be restored from them and iCloud backup doesn’t. I have a ton of apps too which I need to pair down but when I get a new iPhone it usually takes about 18 hours to gain access to all my apps since they’re downloaded from the App Store even with local backups.

Also iCloud backups aren’t end to end encrypted. I mean the act of backing them up is but apple has access to the key so if they need access to the backups they can access them.

I’m deleting most of the videos and photos in my photo album as that will help. I just wish I could figure a way to force messages to live in iCloud only as it saved a ton of space on my iPad when I enabled that feature and my old iPhone 8. It’s just my main phone that won’t seem to free up the space.