HOW TO FIND OLD MESSAGES ON MAC HOW TO
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HOW TO FIND OLD MESSAGES ON MAC MAC

Finally, if you select an attachment and press Show in Finder, you’ll notice that the attachment is in the ~/Library/Messages/Attachments we navigated to from Go To Folder. You can also preview attachments using Quick Look. Then you can choose the biggest ones and only delete those. If you only want to delete large attachments, press Size in the top right of the window to order attachments by file size. You can choose which to keep and which to delete. Of course, you don’t have to delete them all. Alternatively, select the first and press Command-A to select all.Īll the attachments you selected will now be deleted. To remove them all, select the first one, press and hold Shift, then select the last one.You will see in the main window a list of all the attachments on your Mac.Choose the Storage tab and click Manage.

Click on the Apple menu and choose About This Mac.

On recent versions of macOS, there is another way to delete attachments. To remove attachments, paste this file path into the Go To Folder box and drag its contents to the Trash: ~/Library/Messages/Attachments The previous method will delete messages from your Mac, but not attachments.

Drag the files in the files below to the Trash.Ĥ.

Paste this file path into the window: ~/Library/Messages.

In the Finder, click on the Go menu and choose Go to Folder.

HOW TO FIND OLD MESSAGES ON MAC MAC

However, if you want to clear all the messages and conversations on your Mac and don’t want to use Terminal, it could be a very long and laborious process.

HOW TO FIND OLD MESSAGES ON MAC HOW TO

How to delete multiple messages on your Mac from Finderĭeleting individual messages and conversations is fine if that’s all you want to do.

Right-click on the message you want to delete.

If you only want to delete one message from a conversation and not the whole conversation, do this.

Click on the Edit menu and choose Clear Transcript.

Select the conversation you want to delete.

This does the same thing: it deletes the conversation from Messages on your Mac.

Right-click or control-click on the conversation you want to delete.Īlternatively, you can use the Clear Transcript function.

If you’re not comfortable using Terminal or don’t want to delete every message, you can do it from within Messages. How to delete messages from the Messages app

Those commands will delete messages and attachments permanently, without the need to empty the Trash.

To delete attachments, use this command:.

Paste the following command: rm –r ~/Library/Messages/chat.

Go to Applications > Utilities and launch Terminal.

How to delete messages on your Mac using Terminalīefore we show you how to delete messages from within the app itself or in the Mac’s Finder, there is a very quick way to do it if you’re comfortable using Terminal. However, it also means that when you have conversations in Messages on your Mac, they won’t sync with your other devices. Now, when you delete messages, they’ll stay deleted.

Uncheck the box next to ‘Enable Messages in iCloud’.

Click the Messages menu and choose Preferences.

If you want to remove the messages from all your devices, leave it enabled and skip to the next step. If you leave it enabled, the messages you delete will be removed from all the devices synced with your AppleID. To remove messages permanently from your Mac but leave them on your other devices, you’ll have to disable Messages in iCloud.

HOW TO FIND OLD MESSAGES ON MAC FREE

However, there may be occasions when you want to delete some or all of the messages from your Mac to free up space. One of its other benefits is that it archives all your messages on your Mac, whether the conversation took place there or not. You can even use it to send SMS messages from your Mac because if the person you’re messaging isn’t on iMessage, the communication is automatically routed over SMS. But to help you do it all by yourself, we’ve gathered our best ideas and solutions below.įeatures described in this article refer to the MacPaw site version of CleanMyMac X.Īpple’s iMessage system and the Messages app that goes with it make it very easy to sync messages across your Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.

HOW TO FIND OLD MESSAGES ON MAC DOWNLOAD

So here's a tip for you: Download CleanMyMac to quickly solve some of the issues mentioned in this article.

How to find old messages on mac