How to stop iMessage from eating up your iPhone or iCloud storage

When your iPhone begins to flash the dreaded ‘out of memory’ message, iMessage is probably the last thing on your mind that you might think of clearing. But as it turns out, messages might just be one of the worst offenders.

And if you find that clearing one or more messages is not making a difference, there’s a good chance that it has nothing to do with the ‘text’ in it. Confused? Read on to know more.

How to stop iMessage from consuming your iPhone or iCloud memory

Your iOS device will display the component taking up the most space when you look at the disk utility on your device. However, if you’re confused about how messages seem to be taking up a considerable amount, there’s a good reason for it. This is because while SMS or text can’t possibly take up a lot of space, your attachments or media certainly can.

Of course, if you have years of messages piling up in your phone, they are likely to cause a small spike, but there’s little to no possibility of those being the only reason why your iCloud storage is running full.

If iMessage is backing up to your iCloud, Apple is likely keeping every single conversation, along with its media, stored since the beginning of time. However, there’s a way you can review and do away with the files you don’t need anymore.

Firstly, navigate to Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Messages to see the amount of space it is taking up. Here, you will be able to review every possible message you have previously sent to your contacts. On clicking the Edit button, you can choose what to keep or delete based on the storage you have.

How to ensure iMessage doesn't clog up your storage in the future

Once deleted, your iPhone might have enough space to accommodate your immediate tasks, but your iPhone could certainly run out again if you keep using your iMessage app. To tackle this, you might have to go through a few additional steps. 

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You can go to Settings > [Your Name] > iCloud and disable messages to reduce their impact. Alternatively, you can go to Settings > [Your Name] > iCloud > Manage Storage > Messages and check how much space individual conversations take up.

Further, you can tap on Top Conversations and remove chats you don’t want on your iCloud. If that’s not all, you can even navigate back to the previous page and tap Disable & Delete to get rid of messages from iCloud permanently.

With this, your iPhone might be up and running smoothly; however, it is best to occasionally review heavy files and clear any large documents taking up space on your devices.