I got tired of the Message in iCloud storage always showing 270 MB of usage when I only had 99 MB of conversations, so I decided to turn it off on my iPhone and iPad. It said it needed to download my messages on both devices when turning off, but still disabled immediately.
I checked the local storage after doing so and it never increased over 5 MB, so I went through and checked that all my messages and photos/videos were there. Once I did that I attempted to disable and delete messages from the iCloud storage screen. That hung “turning off” after a few minutes I killed the Settings app and tried again and it shut off immediately. It then displayed a message that I could undo this by tapping undo. I went to check the storage size and Messages disappeared from the iCloud storage area (meaning I couldn’t undo anymore which seems like a bug). Local storage size still showed 5 MB for messages, which I’m assuming was wrong.
According to http://www.idownloadblog.com/2017/06/20/how-to-use-messages-on-icloud/ I could undo deleting by either going to the iCloud storage message screen or simply turning messages back on in the iCloud settings. Since the former screen was missing, I did the later on my iPhone.
At that point the Messages item reappeared in iCloud storage and reported to be using 135 Mb (half of what it was before). The conversations still reported as 99.9 MB, so it’s still 35 MB off, but at least I got back 135 MB. Strangely, after enabling it again on my iPad, the conversations listed on there as being 98.2 (1.7 MB smaller), with one conversation listed as 63.3 MB on my iPhone and 60.7 on my iPad (2.6 MB smaller). Those were originally the same size (99.9) before disabling and re-enabling, so I assume they will straighten themselves out at some point.
I tested deleting and that’s syncing so it seems to still work.
On a side note, my messages were still viewable in airplane mode despite “loading” when swiping down in a conversation so I assume they are stored on my device. I don’t see iOS freeing up space as it claims to be doing unless it caches all messages until the space is needed.
I checked the local storage after doing so and it never increased over 5 MB, so I went through and checked that all my messages and photos/videos were there. Once I did that I attempted to disable and delete messages from the iCloud storage screen. That hung “turning off” after a few minutes I killed the Settings app and tried again and it shut off immediately. It then displayed a message that I could undo this by tapping undo. I went to check the storage size and Messages disappeared from the iCloud storage area (meaning I couldn’t undo anymore which seems like a bug). Local storage size still showed 5 MB for messages, which I’m assuming was wrong.
According to http://www.idownloadblog.com/2017/06/20/how-to-use-messages-on-icloud/ I could undo deleting by either going to the iCloud storage message screen or simply turning messages back on in the iCloud settings. Since the former screen was missing, I did the later on my iPhone.
At that point the Messages item reappeared in iCloud storage and reported to be using 135 Mb (half of what it was before). The conversations still reported as 99.9 MB, so it’s still 35 MB off, but at least I got back 135 MB. Strangely, after enabling it again on my iPad, the conversations listed on there as being 98.2 (1.7 MB smaller), with one conversation listed as 63.3 MB on my iPhone and 60.7 on my iPad (2.6 MB smaller). Those were originally the same size (99.9) before disabling and re-enabling, so I assume they will straighten themselves out at some point.
I tested deleting and that’s syncing so it seems to still work.
On a side note, my messages were still viewable in airplane mode despite “loading” when swiping down in a conversation so I assume they are stored on my device. I don’t see iOS freeing up space as it claims to be doing unless it caches all messages until the space is needed.
