My Apple devices have over 55,000 items in the Messages app.

If you are ready to delete entire chats, you might tapTop Conversationsand hit theEditbutton in the top-right corner.

Select all the chats you want to delete and hit theTrashicon in the top-right corner of the page.

Deleting attachments from Messages on the iPhone.

You may have to get yourself invited to those groups again if you use this method.

Tap any of these categories and hit theEditbutton in the top-right corner.

On your iPhone, go toSettings > Apps > Messages, and under Message History, tapKeep Messages.

Automatically deleting old iMessage chats from the Messages app.

it’s possible for you to change this fromForeverto30 Daysor1 Year.

This will automatically delete all iMessage texts and attachments older than the time you selected.

Similarly, underAudio Messageson the same page, tapExpireand selectAfter 2 Minutesto automatically clear unwanted voice notes.

A confirmation prompt asking if the user wants to delete 400 attachments from the Messages app on a Mac.

Return to the Messages tweaks page and scroll to the bottom.

Here, you might enableLow-Quality Image Modeto reduce the size of images you send and receive on iMessage.

Note that this will not stop iMessage chats from appearing on those devices.

Two screenshots of the Messages tab in iCloud, showing how to delete messages stored in the cloud.

On your Mac, go toSystem configs > General > Storageand click theibutton next toMessages.

This will reveal all the large attachments hiding within your Messages app.

If you go to each chat manually, these attachments are hard to track down.

Now disableUse on this iPhone.

This will remove your text messages from your iCloud backups and free up space.

However, itll also stop syncing SMS messages across Apple devices, so be aware of that.

On your Mac, this option is underSystem tweaks > [YOUR NAME] > iCloud > Messages.

TapTop Conversationsand remove the chats you dont want on iCloud.