How to Delete Text Messages on Your iPhone

Photo by Brian Burke

First, let’s start with the basics. Typically, the text messages in your iPhone’s Messages app are grouped into conversations. In this post, we’ll show you how to delete a single text message, a conversation, or multiple conversations.

Most people tend to retain their text messages, especially if they are coming from an important person in their lives. But, in some instances, it may be necessary to delete text messages from time to time—to free up some space on your phone’s memory.

What happens when you inadvertently type the wrong message, send a text to the wrong person, or want to undo what you’ve sent?

Not to worry! Thankfully, you can “unsend” a text message on the iPhone. But, be advised, that you can only do this for up to two minutes after you’ve sent a text.

Simply follow these steps:

1. Select the Messages app from the home screen.
2. Touch and hold the message bubble of the text you want to remove.
3. From the options menu, tap Undo Send.
4. A note confirming that you unsent the message will appear in both conversation transcripts: yours and your recipient’s.

Be advised that when you delete a text message from your iPhone, it doesn’t disappear permanently. A copy of the message is sent to the network provider, and the copy in your phone is only marked as “deleted” by the iPhone’s internal database. So, even though you will see the message as “deleted,” it has actually just been moved to a less accessible region of the phone’s memory. But, the exact length of time that a deleted SMS will remain in your iPhone’s memory cannot be precisely determined.

“The good news for iPhone users however, is that the iPhone tends to store deleted text messages longer than other phones,” according to Jesse Lindmar, Assistant Director of Computer Forensics at Sensei Enterprises. He states that messages up to two years old can usually be recovered.

In the next section, we’ll talk about how to go about deleting individual text messages on your iPhone.

Photo by cottonbro studio

Deleting individual text messages from your iPhone is pretty easy. All you have to do is follow these steps:

1. Select the Messages app from the home screen.
2. Open the individual text message that you want to delete.
3. Touch and hold the message bubble to open an options menu.
4. From the menu, tap more .
5. The individual text will be marked with a blue check inside a circle.
6. Tap the Trash button , then tap Delete Message.

Note: If you accidentally select the wrong text message, you will still have the option to cancel prior to deleting it.

You can also select how long you want to keep your messages. Simply go to Settings > Messages > Keep Messages.

In the next section, we’ll cover how to delete multiple text conversations or all of the messages from your phone.

Now that you know how to delete an individual message from your iPhone, let’s talk about how to delete an entire text conversation or multiple text conversations. There are actually two ways to do this. Here are the steps you’ll want to follow to delete entire conversations:

1. Select the Messages app from the home screen.
2. Touch and hold the conversation that you want to delete to open an options menu.
3. Tap Delete .
4. Tap Delete once more to confirm.

Alternatively, here’s another way to delete a text conversation (as long as it isn’t pinned):

1. Select the Messages app from the home screen.
2. Swipe left over the conversation you want to delete.
3. Tap Delete .
4. Tap Delete once more to confirm.

In oder to delete multiple text conversations at once, you’ll want to follow these next steps:

1. Select the Messages app from the home screen.
2. Tap the Menu button from the upper-right hand corner of the screen.
3. Choose Select Messages from the pop up menu.
4. An empty bubble will appear next to all of the messages.
5. Tap inside the bubbles of each text message conversation that you would like to delete.
6. Tap Delete at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.
7. Tap Delete once more to confirm.