How to Clear iMessage Chat History on Mac and iOS Devices

Oct. 19, 2015 11:12 am / Posted by Jenefey Aaron to Computer Data Recovery
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If you have iMessage installed on your Mac, you will find that iMessage keeps track of the chat history on your Mac. This could be very useful when you need to check the chat history for information you need. However, you may want to clear iMessage chat history on Mac and other iOS devices, and get rid of the old conversations or just to free up some space.

Note: iMessage comes with the Message app on iPhone, iPad, iPod and Mac. It's free for you and you can text to anyone over Wi-Fi using an iOS device or Mac with iMessage. And it's unlimited. To recover deleted iMessages, go for Tenorshare iPhone Data Recovery.

How to Delete iMessage History on OS X

Just follow the simple steps below to clear iMessage chat history on Macbook Pro, Macbook Air and other Mac computer.

1) Quit iMessage on your Mac.
2) Open Finder and press CMD+Shift+G or by navigating to Go > Go To Folder...
3) In the dialog, type in ~/Library/Messages/.
4) There should be at least three files as shown in the screenshot below. We are going to delete the files chat.db chat.db-shm and chat.db-wal.

There's also another way to clear iMessage chat history on Mac OS. You can do this through the command line. Quit out of iMessage and open Terminal, at the prompt type the following:

rm -r ~/Library/Messages/chat.*

When all these are done, just relaunch iMessages on your Mac computer and you will find that the chat history on iMessage is empty now.

How to Clear iMessage Chat History on iPhone, iPad and iPod

Besides your Mac, you might also use iMessage on iPhone, iPad and iPod. And to delete iMessage chat history on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch is different from that on Mac OS X. As a result, we'll describe how to delete iMessage chat history for iOS 9/8/7/6 in two ways.

1. Permanently delete iMessage history on iPhone using iPhone Care Pro

Tenorshare iCareFone (iPhone Care Pro) is a professional iOS 10.3/10.2/10.1/10/9.3/9.2/9/8 cleaning and care utility. It is able to remove all junk files, including useless iMessage conversations permanently in just one click on iPhone 7/7 Plus/SE, 6s/6s Plus, 6/6 Plus, 5s/5/4s, iPad Air 2, iPad mini 4/3, iPad Pro, iPod touch 6G, iPod touch 5G etc.

Step 1: Open iCareFone, and connect your iOS device to computer. Then click on “Speedup&Clean”.

Step 2: Select “Deep Clean” and make sure to slide the button next to “Messages” to ON, and click “Scan Now” to move on.

Step 3: After scanning, you can view the messages scanned out and choose you don’t need, then click “Clean Now” button and then all the iMessage chat history will gone.

2. Clear iMessage history on iOS 9/8/7 devices manually

1) Launch the Messages app on your iPhone or iPad and find the message you'd like to copy.
Hold your finger down on the message until you get a popup menu.
2) Now tap on More.
3) Tap on the Forward button in the lower right hand corner. A new message will populate pre-filled with your forwarded text. Just fill out the rest and send it on its way!

With all the iMessages gone from your Mac and iPhone, your device must run faster. Additionally, you can also delete iPhone browsing history to improve iPhone performance.

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