How To Delete Unwanted Messages on Your iPhone

Deleting Messages on iPhone Explained in a Nutshell

1. First, you navigate to the message you want to delete
2. Second, you Swipe to the left to reveal the “Delete” option.
3. Then you tap on this “Delete” option 
4. And finally, you tap on “Delete” that appears in the confirmation window at the bottom of your screen.

Thinking about deleting unwanted messages on your iPhone may be a good idea. Having all those pictures and videos stored along with all those messages will take at least a couple of gigabytes of storage. 

And deleting unwanted messages is not only to relieve your iPhone of all that clutter but also to prevent any data breach from happening.

And even though most message companies will have end-to-end encryption built into their apps, you never know what hackers are capable of doing. They might break into the server of the biggest companies despite all the security measurements these companies are taking. 

But at the same time, you may want to look back on conversations you had a few years ago. Seeing old pictures, videos, or even memes sent to our best friends is something that we all love.

How To delete an entire conversation on Your iPhone

So how to delete Unwanted Messages from your iPhone? The steps are as follow:

1. First, you navigate to the message you want to delete
2. Second, you Swipe to the left to reveal the “Delete” option.
3. Then you tap on this “Delete” option 
4. And finally, you tap on “Delete” that appears in the confirmation window at the bottom of your screen.

But as with any complicated software, there are multiple ways to delete unwanted messages from your iPhone. Let’s dive right into them. 

How To Delete Multiple Chats at Once

Like we just discovered that you could delete an entire conversation on your iPhone, you can also delete multiple chats at once. Here is how it goes. 

1. Open your Message app on your iPhone.
2. On the left upper corner, you’ll find the option “Edit” Tap on it.
3. This will reveal three options you can choose from. Tap on the first one that says “Select Messages.”
4. All your conversations will now have empty bubbles. Select the desired conversation you want to delete. 
5. On the bottom-right corner, the option “Delete” will be revealed once you’ve select one or multiple conversations.
6. Tap on “Delete” to delete the selected conversations
7. Be aware that tapping on “Delete” will delete the conversations immediately. There is no final confirmation window that pops up like the previous one. 

Read Also: 8 Ways To Open iPhone Sim Card Tray Without Ejector Tool

How to delete individual messages in a conversation 

The next thing I want to show you is how to delete individual messages. This one is very straightforward so let me walk you through all the steps. The steps are also displayed in an infographic to give you a presentation with the proper iPhone layouts.  

1. First, open The Message App
2. Navigate To Your Desired Conversation and tap on it.
3. Scroll to the message or messages you want to delete and then tap and hold on to it.
4. A pop-up window will show up. Tap on “More…”
5. Now you have two options:
   1. Tap The Trash icon on the bottom-left of your screen to delete that one message.
   2. Or select multiple messages by tapping on the empty dots on the left side of your screen and then hit the trash icon.
6. Finally, a conversation window will show up with the text “Delete Message” or “Delete [number] Messages,” depending on the option you went for.

How to automatically delete old messages 

This one is a bit tricky, and I need to explain it to you guys in detail. But as in the previous one, I will add an infographic to visualize the steps you need to go through. 

1. For this one, we need to open the Settings app on the iPhone
2. Scroll down to “Messages,” located in the fifth section of your setting. 
3. Once you’re inside “Messages,” scroll down to “Keep Messages” and tap on it.
4. You now have three options to choose from “30 days”, “1 Year”, or “Forever.” This means that you can let your iPhone delete your messages after 30 days, one year, or keep them forever, respectively.
5. Be aware that if you choose either “30 Days” or “1 Year”, your iPhone will automatically delete your messages before the previous 30 days or the previous year.

Delete Messages That Still Show Up After Deleting Them

You need to be aware that deleting messages from your iPhone doesn’t mean that these messages will be deleted entirely. iOS is structured in such a way that every time you delete a message, it appears to be gone, but it is still on your iPhone. 

Can you delete or remove a message from an iPhone for good? 

You can delete any message from your iPhone for good, but a trace of that message may be found on Apple’s servers. They keep a copy of any message you sent in an encrypted form. Apple stores these messages because they might be ordered by law enforcement in criminal cases to reveal them. It is not easy to read through the content, though, since the messages are end-to-end encrypted.