Delete Text Messages, iMessages, & Conversations from iPhone

Want to delete a text message or conversation thread from an iPhone? Maybe it’s a regretful SMS, a security risk, or just an embarrassing iMessage conversation from after you had too much to drink, whatever it is you can quickly delete an entire conversation or even selectively delete only certain parts of a message thread, whether it’s a text, iMessage, or MMS.

It’s super easy, whether it’s a single specific message you want to trash, or an entire thread and conversation.

Quickly Delete Entire SMS & Text Message Threads

This removes any trace of there being message correspondence between yourself and the recipient, on the iPhone at least:

1. Open the Messages app and tap the “Edit” button in the corner
2. Locate the SMS thread you want to remove and tap the little red (-) button, then tap the “Delete” button to remove all messages and correspondence with that person
3. Repeat as necessary for other contacts

So that takes care of an entire conversation, but what if you just want to selectively remove a message or two from a thread, without deleting everything that was written? Fortunately, that’s easy too.

Selectively Delete Individual Messages from a Correspondence Thread

Do this if you just want to remove a line or two from a correspondence without deleting all other messages with that person:

1. Tap the message you want to edit from the Messages list
2. Tap on the “Edit” button in the corner
3. Find the text, MMS, or messages that you want to remove and tap them so that a red checkbox appears alongside
4. Tap the red “Delete” button to remove only the selected messages

This can be used to modify the appearance of conversations, and could be used for privacy purposes, to avoid awkward situations, or even just to create a funny looking chat to play a joke on someone.

Once a message has been deleted the only way to uncover it would be to manually sort through and read SMS backups, which isn’t the most user-friendly task in the world, and thus extremely unlikely to occur.

Note: This does not delete the message from the iMessage server, and it does not remove it from the other individuals iPhone or iOS device, instead, it only removes it locally from the Messages app on the specific device being modified at the time. There is no way to remove texts from someone others phone without physical access to it, so keep that in mind when deleting a text for privacy purposes.

If you’re using iMessage here, this will apply to iPod touch and iPad as well, but obviously SMS and MMS will only apply to iPhone users. An interesting side effect of deleting messages can be that you will often recover the “Other” space that shows up as used on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod when synced to iTunes. Not a bad bonus for trashing messages you no longer want!