I have an iPhone and the choices for saving messages are 30 days, 1 year, or forever. I have always had mine set to forever but I'm starting to question if that is really necessary. My messages are currently taking up 21GB of space on my phone, which seems excessive.
So, I'm curious - how long do you save your messages? What's your thought process?
nectarine / 2400 posts
Mine are forever (I think) and I like that because I do sometimes scroll back to see things. However, scrolling back is annoying so I would change it to 1 year I guess. 30 days isn’t long enough
pomelo / 5573 posts
I had it set to forever but I needed to free up space so I switched to 30 days, but that wasn’t enough - I’d want to go back and check things and it would be gone - so now I’m at a year.
pear / 1622 posts
I didn’t know there were choices. I am thankful forever is a choice - thinking of the last texts I had with my mom. But generally I just try to go through and delete what is not needed each week.
squash / 13199 posts
@catgirl: forever. But on my old phone it would auto delete old messages to make room for new ones
grapefruit / 4144 posts
@catgirl: It impinges who my texts are from. For example, texts from my husband and DD, I keep "forever." Those from students, I delete after the semester concludes. Ones from clients, I keep until they have "moved on." Messages from companies or my DD's school, I keep for a week or less unless I am dealing with an extended issue with the individual who composed the text. For friends and extended family, I usually save messages for a year.
persimmon / 1082 posts
Mine are forever but i go through and delete messages once in awhile from people. Hopefully that makes sense
nectarine / 2018 posts
My texts with DH, my mom, and some of my friends go back to 2009. I very rarely even go back six months to look at anything, which is why it seems excessive. But I have this fear of letting them go and regretting it. I just worry at some point it will take up way too much space or that it's silly to have one third of my current space be messages. We've been actively working on decluttering our house and I have moved on to digital clutter, which is how I came to be worrying about this.
@gotkimchi: Yeah, i wouldn't do 30 days. If I change it, it would be to a year. Scrolling through is a pain and the search function isn't always helpful. I was playing around with it last night and it took me 20ish minutes to go back a year with DH's texts.
@erinbaderin: I don't NEED the space right now. But at some point I might, and I don't want to forever need a phone with more space. I wouldn't do 30 days, I feel like I would miss referencing things.
@autumnleaves: That's the thing holding me back, if something happened to my mom, DH, my sisters, or my best friends I might be sad to not have old conversations.
@Mrsbells: @Kaohinani: @cake2017: I do go through already and delete texts occasionally. So it's mainly family and close friends.
pomelo / 5084 posts
@catgirl: three seconds. I don’t keep any - I don’t see the point and so also hate taking up space!! I have only the bare minimum for apps too. Everyone who sees my phone thinks I got it that day
cantaloupe / 6730 posts
Forever and I’m so glad I did. My dad died 16 months ago and I love looking at our conversations.
nectarine / 2018 posts
@wrkbrk: Wow that's intense! DO you save them from anyone? Do you ever regret not having them?
@Grace: I'm sure those are really great to have. 
pomelo / 5084 posts
@catgirl: no one! Haha. And no, I’ve never thought about it. If a message is particularly meaningful (lately from my therapist ha) I’ll take a screen shot.
kiwi / 556 posts
Forever for me. But I cull those I know I don’t care about. I go through them a few times a year and just delete the random people (I don’t delete individual texts, but whole conversations). Those that I do keep end up being the important ones that have tons of photos and videos and thus take up space.
But if you back up your iPhone you usually have the option to backup texts.
I also lost my father last year and I do go through our conversations. The big family group texts are the best because my father was always making terrible Dad jokes.
pear / 1565 posts
No clue what my setting is but I pretty much delete texts on a daily/weekly basis.
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