How To Save Photos From Apple Messages

If the data in your Messages app is taking too much space on your Mac, iPhone or in iCloud, then you should clear out old photos and videos in conversations. You can do this in the Messages apps, but also in Settings. Then be sure to save and delete photos as you get them moving forward.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Are Messages using up a lot of space on your iPhone or Mac? Let me show you how you can tidy it up and keep it clean moving forward.
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Now I've been getting a lot of questions lately about the Messages App taking up a lot of storage space. This usually happens, not because you get a lot of messages as text messages don't take up much space, but because you send and receive a lot of photos and videos. These are all saved in your Messages database as well. 
For instance here on the Mac if you go to System Settings and then go to General and then go to Storage you'll see Messages here and you may find that might be one of your biggest items. It's not the case here on my demo account but I've seen people report large numbers here. Likewise on the iPhone. If you go into Settings and then go to General there and then look at iPhone Storage you may also see a large amount here for messages. Furthermore, if you click on that and then look at what's taking up space you may find that Photos and Videos are using a ton of storage space. 
Now looking at Messages on either device you'll see all your conversations and you'll be able to look at a conversation and, of course, see the contents. So in this case here's a conversation and you can see there are some pictures and videos here. It could be that this conversation goes back years and has dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of photos that you've sent back and forth with this person. These, of course, all take up space. Some may be compressed and only take up a few hundred K, while others maybe the full resolution versions of photos that could be a couple of megs in size. It really adds up. Then, of course, videos can take up even more. Now if you have this problem dealing with it may take up two steps. 
One is to deal with all of the photos and videos you have so far. The other is to create good habits so this doesn't happen again moving forward. 
So the idea is basically, any photos or videos you want to save, that you want to keep, you should get out of the Photos App and then delete them from within the Photos App. If you don't want to save them you just simply need to Delete them. So it is pretty easy to do when you're looking at a conversation. For instance here on the Mac there's even a little Download button here. If I click that it will ask if that photo should be saved to your Photos Library. But you can also Control Click, two-finger click or right click on any image like this and you have a variety of options. For instance you can add it to the Photos Library, you can simply Copy it and if you do that you can paste it into a document. But, more importantly, you can paste it in the Finder. So for instance if you want to save it but you don't want to add to your Photos Library because it is not a photo you took you could go into a folder you've created in the Finder and from here you can go and Paste item and that copied photo will now appear there. But you could also just Drag and Drop. So I could take this image right here, for instance, and drag it into the Finder like that and you can see that also works. Also, notice when you bring up the Context Menu you have the option to delete right here. So you could get rid of this after Saving it or, if you don't want to save it, just get rid of it. 
Now there's another more convenient way to do this on the Mac. That's while you're in a conversation click the i button at the top right. Then scroll down and you'll see here a section called Photos. Here you can access all your photos. It turns out there's exactly six in this demo conversation. But if there were more you would see a Show More button and then you would just be viewing photos. Here you can Control Click on these and get the Add To Photos Library, Copy, Share option, and Delete. You could also Drag and Drop from here and you could also select multiple ones. So I can select this one, and I'm going to Command Click and select this one and this one. Now I can drag all three of these, like that, or Control Click to delete them all. So this is an easier way to view your photos without having to scroll through all of the messages, a majority of which maybe text. This will just focus on the Photos and Videos. 
Now I've got the same basic functionality in the Messages App on your iPhone and iPad. So, for instance, I could go into this conversation here and I could see these photos. I could also click here at the top where you see the little icon or avatar and I can scroll down and you could see the same photo section. It will show videos as well. There's a See All button just to go into this. You can tap and hold on one and you've got your Save, you've got Copy, you've got Share, you've got Delete. You could also select and you could select multiple ones and you've got a Delete button at the bottom right. But you also have a Save button which will just save it to your Photos App. So you can Save them. So I can say save these three here. Then I can select them again and then I could Delete these if I want and get them out of Messages. Just like with Messages on the Mac you can do this in the conversation itself. So here's a little Save to Photos button. You could tap and hold on a photo like this and you've got options here. 
Now another way to deal with them could actually be easier is on the Mac go to System Settings and then go to General and then go to Storage, click on the i button for Messages and now you're going to see a list of media that's in Messages. You can select one or Command Click, or Shift Click to select multiple ones. Here you can easily delete these items. You could also, if you select one of these, Show in Finder. It will actually go deep into your User Library into the database where the Messages App stores things and give you the file. So you can now take this and drag it elsewhere. So store in a folder or drag to the Photos App if you like. 
One of the big advantages to doing this is you can actually sort. You can see I've got Sorted By Size here. So you can sort and get the largest ones out first. So if you just need to clear some space now and you want to deal with all of your photos later on you can use this to see what the largest files are and get rid of those. One the iPhone and iPad if you go into Settings and then General and then iPhone Storage and then in the Messages you can go into one of these individual sections here, like Photos. You'll also see a list here Sorted By Size. You go to Edit, you can select more than one and easily delete them or you can select one like this and you can view it and you can tap here at the top and you could Save To File, Save to Photos or Share, like that. You could also use this button down here and you've got similar options. 
So you can deal with your existing photos and videos in the Messages App on your iPhone and Mac or you can deal with them in System Settings or Settings as well. Now you shouldn't have to deal with it separately on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad. You should be able to do it on one and it should sync with all the others. But you have to be using Messages in iCloud. So on the iPhone here if you go to Settings and then go to your Apple ID and then you go to iCloud here you want to go to Show All, under Apps, and look for Messages in iCloud. If you have it turned On then everything should be syncing between your devices. So you can choose one device, say your Mac, get rid of a bunch of the photos and videos, Save them out, Delete the rest, and then it should eventually sync with your iPhone. You don't have to do it again. On your Mac you would also find this under Apple ID here, under iCloud, and then go to Show More Apps and then here you'll see Messages in iCloud as well. 
Notice that you also have the option here for setting a time limit for keeping Messages. I know there are people that want to keep their messages forever and others that want to get rid  of them as soon as they've read them. Well, you've got this Keep Messages setting here and you can set it to say, 30 days, or one year. That way it would limit how much storage Messages is using. 
Now once you've tidied everything up how do you move forward without creating the same mess again over time. Well the idea is to manage the photos and videos as they come in. So you get a message from somebody, you view the photo, and you feel you're done with it and you don't need to do anything with it. You can right at that point go ahead and delete it. Or if you feel you want to Save it, like maybe somebody sent you a photo they took of you, you can add it to your Photos Library or save it to some other way. Then delete it. The idea is to kind of keep up with things if your message storage is important to you. You don't have to do it with every message as soon as it comes in. You could just do it periodically or when it is convenient. It's really up to you how you handle it. For some people they just prefer to get a lot of local storage, a lot of iCloud storage, and just save everything. If you want to do it that way that's fine. But if you want to limit how much storage is used by Messages then you're going to have to work at it a little bit here and there. I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 7 Responses to “How To Save Photos From Apple Messages”

Robert Salter

11 months ago

If I have my messages app set to automatically delete, lets say after 7 days and the message(s) to delete has/have attachments, will the attachments to that message also be deleted after that 7 day delete setting or are the attachments stored on the device after the text portion of the message was auto deleted? Thank you

Gary Rosenzweig

Robert: The attachments should be deleted, yes.

Steve Jones

Great lesson today. Filing is about retrieval, not putting things away so the less you have to plow through when you want to find something, the better off you are.

Sheldon

Thanks bunches

Bob Coté

10 months ago

Thanks for another great video. If I save a Messages image to Photos and then delete it from Messages, doesn’t it still take up the same amount of storage on my device. Isn’t the image simply in Photos instead of Messages?

Bob: Yes, but isn't that where you want the photos you save permanently? The idea is to keep the photos you really want in Photos, delete the rest so nothing is in Messages taking up space there. Also, not everyone uses iCloud for both Photos and Messages.