4

My wife's iPad is constantly out of space. Most of the space is used up by Messages, where her iPhone Messages sync with iCloud, and her iPad sync with iCloud, and thus, she copies all those large attachments to to iPad and fills up her space.

I found this article that talks about enabling the "Auto Delete Old Conversion" feature. However, before I do this, will enabling this feature on her iPad also delete messages on her iPhone and Mac as well since she is using iCloud Messages? She wants to keep all her messages on her iPhone/Mac since she has ample storage there.

Improve this question
7
  • 1
    It does. Did you consider turning off Messages on iPad?
    – Nimesh Neema ♦
    Jul 7, 2019 at 20:08
  • Do you mean turn off the "iMessage" setting under Settings -> Messages -> iMessage?
    – Swisher Sweet
    Jul 7, 2019 at 20:10
  • 1
    Yes. Turn off the switch. This will disable Messages only on your iPad while keeping the messages intact on iPhone/Mac.
    – Nimesh Neema ♦
    Jul 7, 2019 at 20:11
  • 1
    It disables sending/receiving Messages on iPad altogether (something you may not be looking for).
    – Nimesh Neema ♦
    Jul 7, 2019 at 20:12
  • 1
    Yes, this will not affect her other devices. However, I'm not sure this will automatically free up space on the iPad. (Not very sure how the internal caching works. The device "may" or "may not" purge the cache of Messages if it requires space for other uses after you disable Messages)
    – Nimesh Neema ♦
    Jul 7, 2019 at 20:22

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

You can consider disabling Messages altogether by going to Settings app → Messages → iMessage. This will completely disable Messages on the iPad (you won't be able to send/receive Messages).

Disabling Messages on one device doesn't affect in any way on other devices linked to the same Apple ID.

However, simply turning off Messages may not automatically purge the message cache.

Improve this answer
2
  • Thanks @Nimesh. I turned off iMessage. However, this didn't free up space, as you pointed out might be the case. I still have a recommendation to Auto Delete Old Conversations under storage, which will save a lot of space.
    – Swisher Sweet
    Jul 7, 2019 at 20:28
  • 1
    We won’t know till we see the overall storage situation Nimesh. If the iPad is under storage pressure, the purge starts automatically. Your overall answer seems correct, no - disabling on one device only affects that one device, so the rest is moot.
    – bmike ♦
    Jul 7, 2019 at 20:46
0

I’ll delete this later or edit it into a direct answer (or maybe a how to if Apple doesn’t have a step by step guide to this)

What are the recommendations and storage constraints for this iPad specifically?

enter image description here

Note that the darker grey is still being checked and cataloged, so you want to let iOS take several minutes to run the various sizing checks if you are really low on space.

Improve this answer
2
  • One of the recommendations is to Review Large Attachments. It is consuming the most space.
    – Swisher Sweet
    Jul 7, 2019 at 20:26
  • Nice. If you upload an image of your situation, people can help with ideas you might have missed
    – bmike ♦
    Jul 7, 2019 at 20:45

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .