Retrieving and deleting old iMessages stored in iCloud that aren't appearing on iPhone
my icloud says I have 68.8gb of messages - 334,517 messages. my assumption is that if I did “Turn off and delete from icloud” that I would have access to probably any message history from my iphone use dating back from when I started using icloud? because this is what i’m assuming is happening.
“top conversations: 11.71gb” top conversation’s size: 1.91gb, next is 1.27, 1.24. after that, under 1gb and honestly not many.
I do not have enough phone storage to turn off and delete from icloud to be able to delete irrelevant messages. if there were any messages i’d want to delete, it’d be ones from so long ago that I can’t even see them!
I try and find a contact from forever ago that I used to text constantly, and when I text them, it doesn’t magically fill some ancient messages, either. so i’m just really confused how to find these and be able to delete the ones I don’t need anymore, without turning on the "Delete Messages After 1 Year" function.
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
Original Title: How do I access imessages that are stored in the cloud that aren't showing on my device?
iPhone 14, iOS 18
