Help · Mac storage

Messages taking up space on your Mac?

By Grant and Brad, who make Pangalin's apps · Updated 11 October 2026

Every photo, video and file anyone has sent you in Messages is kept on your Mac, by default forever. After a few years that can be many gigabytes. The fix is to trim it inside Messages.

Don't delete files from ~/Library/Messages in Finder. Conversations still point to them, so you get broken images and blank attachments. And if Messages in iCloud is on, deleting in Messages removes things from all your devices, so decide what you want to keep first.

See how much it uses

Choose Apple menu › System Settings › General › Storage and click the ⓘ next to Messages. It lists conversations and attachments, biggest first, and you can delete from there.

1. Keep messages for less time

1. In Messages, choose Messages › Settings › General.
2. Set Keep messages to 1 Year or 30 Days.

Older conversations and their attachments are then deleted automatically. This is permanent, so save any photos you want to keep first.

2. Remove big attachments from a conversation

1. Select a conversation that has lots of photos or videos.
2. Click the person's or group's name at the top.
3. Scroll to Photos (or another section), click Show More, select the items (Shift-click for several) and delete them.

To keep a photo first, drag it to your Desktop or into Photos.

3. Use Messages in iCloud

Choose Messages › Settings › iMessage and tick Enable Messages in iCloud. Your messages and attachments are kept in iCloud, and with Store in iCloud turned on in Storage settings, macOS can keep older attachments in iCloud only when your Mac needs space. You need enough iCloud storage for it.