How to Delete Photos & Videos From Text Messages on iPhone

Need a quick and simple way to delete pictures from messages? Or was it videos? Either way, we’ve got you. We put together these simple instructions in one place to help you tidy up your massages. Whether you need more room or just want to remove that one specific pic, it’s all right here. Our team tested every method ourselves, and yep – they work like a charm.

Can I Delete a Photo From a Text on iPhone Without Deleting the Message?

Yes, you can! A lot of people assume that if they want to delete a photo or video from a text conversation, they have to delete the entire message – kind of like how Mail works when you want to ditch a giant attachment. But in iMessage, that’s not the case. You can remove a photo or video without wiping the whole chat. Still, there’s a catch or two.

When you delete a photo from your Messages app, it only disappears from your device. That means if someone sent you the photo, you can remove it from your end, no problem – but they’ll still have it in their thread unless they delete it too. Same goes the other way around. If you sent a photo and then delete it from your text conversation, the person who received it? Yeah, they still see it.

But let’s get back to your device—if your goal is just to tidy up your local storage and remove photos from text messages, it’s totally doable.

2 Simple Ways to Delete Photos/Videos From Text Messages on iPhone

We decided, for convenience, to break it into two methods. Which one’s right for you depends on how thorough you want to be.

Let’s start with the more precise option.

Method 1: Remove Specific Pictures from a Messages Chat

Let’s say there’s one photo – maybe a screenshot your friend sent of your typo – that you never want to see again. Here’s how to delete a specific photo in a text message:

1. Open the Messages app and go into the conversation that has the photo or video you want gone.
2. Now, find the exact message bubble that holds the image. Once you do, press and hold on that bubble. A little menu will pop up – tap More.
3. Now you’ll see a screen where that message is selected, and you can tap the trash can icon in the corner.
4. Confirm the deletion, and poof – it’s gone. Just that one picture or video. Clean and simple.

The rest of the conversation? Untouched. The photo? Gone. Your typo? Never happened.

We use this method all the time when someone sends something that doesn’t need to live on in our iPhone. It takes seconds, but your message thread instantly feels lighter.

Be aware of what’s saved! Deleting a photo from the chat doesn’t remove it from your Photos app if you already saved it. If you want it gone completely, check your Photos library too.

Method 2: Delete All Photos in Messages

Ready to go full clean slate? This option’s for you.

It would be way too cumbersome to go through each message bubble by hand, one by one. Not to mention the time it takes. Here’s how to remove all photos from messages (and yes videos too):

1. Open the Messages app and tap into the conversation.
2. Then tap the contact’s name or group name at the top. Scroll down a bit, and you’ll see a section called Photos.
3. Hit See All, and there it is: every image and video exchanged in that thread, lined up like a visual history book.
4. Tap Select, choose the files you want gone, and hit the trash icon.
5. Confirm the deletion, and you’re done.

This works for videos, too – the app doesn’t make a big distinction between photos and videos in this view. Everything shows up together, side by side. The giveaway? Videos have a little duration stamp in the corner, so you’ll know exactly what you’re looking at before you decide to let it go.

One more thing: this only clears the media from that specific chat. So yeah, you’ll need to repeat these steps for any other threads you want to clean up.

Can I Clear Text Pictures on iPhone Automatically?

There isn’t really a built-in way to automatically delete just the photos and videos from your text messages – and yeah, we wish there was too. The only true “automatic” option Apple offers is to set your messages to auto-delete after a set amount of time, like 30 days or 1 year. That includes everything in those messages – texts, photos, videos, memes… all of it. Great for a fresh start, not so great if you’re trying to keep the conversation but lose the photos.

Now, there is something kind of close. Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Messages, then tap Review Large Attachments.

That pulls up a list of the biggest files you’ve received through iMessage (usually anything over 4MB). You can scroll through and delete them right from there. Super handy if you want to clear those fast without going into each conversation.

Still, this won’t catch everything – and it definitely won’t touch any pictures or videos that were already saved to your Photos app. Once a file leaves Messages and lands in your Photos app, it’s outside this cleanup system. So while this method helps, it’s more of a space-saving tool than a true “delete text photos only” feature.

But there is a way to clean up those saved photos and videos from Messages automatically – just not with Apple’s tools. You’ll need a little help from a third-party app.

Think about it. You save a meme from a group chat… then save it again… then maybe a video or three of someone’s dog spinning in circles. Before you know it, your Photos app has turned into a chaotic gallery of duplicates, triplicates, and nonsense. That’s where iPhone cleaners can make a real difference.

We’ve tested a bunch of these cleaning apps over the past year, and if we had to pick one for this kind of cleanup, it would be Clever Cleaner: iPhone Photo Cleaner. First off – it’s totally free. No ads, no paywalls. Second, it’s especially good for large files, which makes it perfect for saved-from-text videos that tend to hog serious space. It can sort videos by size (a feature the iPhone Photos app still doesn’t offer!), so you can quickly spot the space-wasters and delete them.

Even better, Clever Cleaner uses smart AI to find and clean up duplicates, and also visually similar images. That means it catches things the built-in duplicate finder misses – like ten slightly different angles of your lunch. And yeah, while iOS does have a built-in duplicate detection, it only works for exact copies – and it doesn’t always show up right away.

So if you’re ready to automatically delete photos and videos you saved from Messages – Clever Cleaner makes it easy. Let’s take a look at how to use it:

1. Download Clever Cleaner from the App Store.
2. Once it’s installed, open the app and give it permission to access your Photos library. It needs this to scan your saved files – don’t worry, it’s not snooping through your Messages. Also, according to the official Clever Cleaner cleanup app page, it “does all the processing locally on your device.” That means no photos or personal data get uploaded to the cloud. Everything stays on your iPhone, where it belongs.
3. At the bottom of the screen, you’ll see four categories: Similars, Screenshots, Lives, and Heavies. Start with Similars and Heavies.
4. In Similars, you can tap Smart Cleanup, and the app will automatically select the worst shots in a series – blurry, off-angle stuff – and leave the best one behind. Its AI is designed to identify the “Best Shot” in each series, and honestly? It’s pretty accurate – we were honestly quite surprised. You can read more about it in our full Clever Cleaner review.
5. If you spot something you do want to keep just tap Restore to pull it out of the cleanup list. No harm done. Once everything looks good, Slide to delete, and confirm the deletion one more time.
6. Next, jump over to the Heavies tab. You’ll see your biggest files right at the top – usually videos, nothing eats up space like that one-time-only, 3-minute clip of your friend trying (and failing) to land a skateboard trick.
7. Here, you can tap any video to preview it, select what you want to dump, and hit Move to Trash. Then, just like before, tap Empty Trash, confirm it, and that’s it.

Well – almost it.

When you delete photos and videos using Clever Cleaner (or anything else, really), they don’t vanish instantly. Instead, they head over to the Recently Deleted album in your Photos app, where they hang out for 30 days. Apple’s way of saying, “Are you sure you meant to do that?”, but you can go clear them out manually.

Common iMessage Photo Deletion Issues (And What Might Work)

Now we want to talk about some complications you might run into.

Imagine you deleted the photos just like we showed you above—everything looked fine. Except… a day later, they’re back.

We’ve seen this problem pop up everywhere – Reddit, Apple Support Communities, and our own tests. People go through hundreds of message attachments, delete them, and then, like some ghost of a meme past, they reappear in Messages or iCloud storage. What gives?

Let’s break it down.

Problem 1: Deleted Photos and Videos Come Back After a While

Why it happens: This one’s almost always due to iCloud synchronization. If you’re using Messages in iCloud, a deleted photo might reappear if the deletion didn’t sync properly across your devices – or if another device (like your Mac or iPad) still has it.

Fixes people have tried:

• Disable Messages in iCloud (Settings > [Your Name] > iCloud > Show All > Messages).
• Wait a bit (sometimes it takes hours), then re-enable it.
• Make sure you delete the file on all synced devices.
• Some found it helps to delete the entire message that contains the photo – not just the image itself.

Problem 2: You Delete an Image, But It Stays in Contact’s “Info” View

Why it happens: Sometimes the image is still tied to a specific message that hasn’t been fully deleted. If that message is still sitting around – even in a deleted state – your phone may still associate the image with the conversation.

Reported workaround:

• Go to Messages > Edit > Show Recently Deleted, and fully remove messages from there.
• Then go back to the thread, tap the contact name > See All (under Photos), and check again.

Problem 3: Text Photos Don’t Delete at All

Symptoms: You tap “Delete,” and nothing happens. No error. No deletion. Just vibes.

What we found:

• This often happens with older photos or those sent from macOS (dragged and dropped from a Mac into iMessage).
• In some cases, these photos are tied to a text snippet. Unless you delete the text message that came with it, the image won’t budge.
• Users discovered that searching for the image via the global Messages search (swipe down from the top in the app) lets you jump to the message that holds it. From there, delete the entire bubble – photo and all.

Bottom line? iMessage photo deletion isn’t always straightforward, especially when iCloud or cross-device syncing gets involved. But with a little patience, most of these bugs have workarounds.

Final Words

We hope the methods above helped you finally delete those pictures (or videos) from your iPhone Messages without losing your mind in the process.

If you found this guide helpful, let us know! Or better yet, share it with a friend. Got more questions? Scroll down to the FAQ section – we’ve answered the most common ones there. Didn’t find what you’re looking for? Head over to our community forum – we’d love to hear from you.