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This article tells you how to Permanently Delete Messages On smartphone. Even a lot of plain text messages don’t take up much space on Android and iPhone, so deleting messages won’t save you much space. However, you might want to delete messages for privacy reasons or just to keep your Messages app more organized. No matter why, you can delete either the whole conversation or just one message.
You can also set up your phone so that it deletes messages on its own after a certain amount of time. Sometimes, you may need to delete some of the messages in your messaging app. This could be because there are too many old or irrelevant messages and you want to clean up the app, or because your internal storage is getting full and you need to delete some messages to make room.
How To Permanently Delete Messages On iPhone
Deleting Entire Conversations
This is a quick and simple thing to do. Here’s what to do when you want to delete all of your messages with someone:
- Swipe to the left on a conversation.
- Tap the “Delete” button that pops up.
There is another way to do this, but it will leave the conversation empty in the main view of Messages.
- Open up a conversation.
- Tap and hold on any message within.
- Tap on “More” when the pop-up options appear.
- Tap on “Delete All” in the top left, then “Delete Conversation” to confirm.
Deleting Individual Messages
You can delete individual messages in a conversation thread if you don’t want to delete the whole conversation. You can also go to the official Apple support site to know more information about this. Getting rid of certain messages is a lot like the second way to get rid of conversations:
- Open up a conversation.
- Tap and hold on the message you’d like to delete.
- Tap on “More” when the pop-up options appear.
- Tap on the dots next to any other messages you’d like to delete, if any.
- Tap the trash can icon in the bottom-left corner, then tap “Delete Message” to confirm.
How To Permanently Delete Messages On Android phone
Deleting Individual Messages
We’ll start with the simplest way to delete texts, which is to delete just one message from a thread.
- Start by opening the chat thread where the messages you want to delete are. Scroll through the message, whether it was sent or received, until you find the text you want to delete.
- Now, tap and hold your finger on the text you want to get rid of, and it will become highlighted. The message will disappear when you tap the trash can icon in the top-right corner of the screen. The action bar will appear at the top of the screen.
- Unfortunately, Android Messages doesn’t let you delete more than one message at once in this way. You’ll need to long-press one message, then tap the other messages and hit the trash can icon.
Deleting Messaging Threads
Obviously, deleting messages one by one would take hours, if not more, if you wanted to delete an entire conversation. This depends on how many texts you have on your phone.
- Getting rid of old threads you don’t use is a great compromise between getting rid of every message on your phone and getting rid of nothing.
- It helps keep your texting app clean and free of threads that aren’t important, but it also keeps the messages from close friends and family.
- To delete a thread, press and hold on the thread you want to delete in the main messaging menu. A checkmark will appear on top of the photo icon for your texting thread, and another action bar will appear at the top of the screen.
- Next, tap the trash can icon and then tap “Delete” to confirm.
- Android Messages lets you delete and archive multiple threads at once, which you can’t do with single messages. Once you’ve tapped and held down on one thread as shown above, you can tap on other threads to delete them without having to hold down.
FAQ
Can text messages be deleted permanently?
Can you get rid of text messages for good? Yes, you can! Depending on whether you have an Apple or a Google phone, there are many different ways to delete texts from your phone, but it is possible and an option for users.
Can someone else see my deleted text messages?
You can get it back or delete it for good at that moment. That also means that if someone knows your passcode, they can see your deleted messages. The good news is: Text messages that you decide not to send don’t show up in the file of recently deleted messages.
Can text messages tracked after deleted?
Yes, they can, so be careful if you’ve been cheating or doing something shady at work. Messages are stored as files on the SIM card. When you move or delete messages, the data stays in the same place. All you are doing is telling the phone to point in different ways at the files.
Where do deleted text messages go?
Android stores text messages in the phone’s memory, so if you delete them, there’s no way to get them back. You can, however, get a text message backup app from the Android market that will let you get back any text messages you accidentally deleted.