Delete pictures or videos from the iOS Messages app

Messages is one of my most used iOS apps, and I get a fair amount of photos and videos sent to me by friends and family. While I like to save the actual text messages I get, I don’t always want to keep the photos and videos that often come with them.

Thankfully, it’s very easy to delete individual or multiple photos and videos, and I’ll show you how to do it in this how-to.

How to delete individual photos and videos in the iOS Messages app

Here’s how you can quickly delete individual photos and videos from Messages on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch:

1. Press down on the photo or video until a popup menu appears.

2. Tap on More.

3. You’ll see a blue checkmark next to the image you want to delete.

4. Tap on the Trash icon.

5. Tap on Delete Message.

The photo or video you selected will be permanently deleted, but the rest of the conversation will still appear in Messages.

How to delete multiple photos and videos in the iOS Messages app

Deleting multiple photos and videos is also very quick and just takes a few more taps depending on how many items you want to remove:

1. Press down on the photo or video until a popup menu appears.

2. Tap on More.

3. You’ll see a blue checkmark next to the image you want to delete.

4. Now scroll up or down and tap on all the other photos and videos you want to delete.

5. Tap on the Trash icon.

6. Tap on Delete Message.

All of the photos and videos you selected will be deleted permanently, but everything else will be left as is on your iOS device.

Deleting photos and videos can help free up space on your iOS device

As I noted above, I like to keep the text messages I get from friends and family. But I have noticed that tons of images and videos can also become a storage problem over time. So if you see a photo or video that you know you don’t want to keep, it’s worth taking a few seconds to delete it after you look at it.

Someday perhaps our iOS devices will have a terabyte of storage capacity, but that marvel is still a long way off. So preserving storage space by getting rid of unneeded photos and videos in Messages can be a big help.

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