How to Delete All iMessage Chat History from Mac or MacBook

Delete All iMessage Chat History from Mac

The best thing about a MacBook is that it can save and back up all previous messages automatically when you are connected to your device. Sometimes, this becomes a problem for us, especially when we want to delete all our iMessages.

Most of us most want to delete all our messages because of privacy or we want to delete all other messages so that no one can see them there are many other reasons for deleting iMessages.

We will tell you some useful tricks for deleting iMessages from your MacBook or Mac.

Problem

You can easily delete your iMessages by doing a few tricks, it is not difficult to delete all your messages on Mac if you know useful tricks.

We mostly deleted a message from default settings and you can recover all those deleted messages at some point if you only close the conversation then it will only disappear from chats but when the person texts you again then it will reappear again. But you can permanently fix this problem.

How to Permanently Delete all iMessages from a Mac?

First of all, you need to go to the Preferences menu that will be available on your iMessages app. Now, click on the general option, after that you will see some other options. You simply need to unselect the option of “Save the history when conversations are closed” option.

By doing this, in the future, you can delete your messages permanently from default settings. But the previous messages are still the problem but we will help you in this regard as well.

If you want to delete all your messages then you need to follow these steps:

• Close the iMessage app.
• Now, you need to press Command + Shift + G. By doing this, you will shift from Go To Folder option.
• Now, on Go to Folder option, you need to type ~/Library/Messages and then click on Go.    

• Now, click to select chat.db, chat.db-wal, chat.db-shm these files.
• Now, transfer the selected files to the trash folder.
• Delete all the files from the Trash folder or empty the trash folder.
• Go to the iMessage app to check out if the trick was successful.

Note: This method will only delete your text messages and doesn’t delete attachments from conversations. If you want to delete the attachment as well then you need to follow the steps below.

1. Close the iMessage app.
2. Now, you need to press Command + Shift + G. By doing this, you will shift from Go To Folder option.
3. Now, on Go to Folder option, you need to type ~/Library/Messages and then click on Go.      
4. Click to select all the files that you want to delete like music, videos, document etc.
5. Cut them into the Trash Folder.
6. Now, clear the Trash Folder.

In this way, you can easily delete all the attachments from your conversation that you recently deleted.

Alternative Methods

If you don’t want to delete them manually then you have another way to delete iMessages by using terminals and deleting them by using a simple command that will permanently delete the messages.

For deleting iMessages from your Mac, you need to open the terminals and enter the command that is given below:

rm –r ~/Library/Messages/chat.*

This command will remove all your messages without the need to clear the Trash folder.

If you want to delete attachments then follow this command.

rm –r ~/Library/Messages/Attachments/??

This command will delete all the attachments from the chat section that you recently deleted.

Keep in Mind: This method will permanently delete all your messages and attachments. Now, there will be not any other method to recover these messages.

Erase Conversations Directly

You can also delete all your messages from the conversation directly from the conversation window. You can delete your messages by selecting conversation separately. When you are done with selecting then open the context menu and click on the Delete option.

Now, click on Delete again. When you click on delete again then it will permanently delete all your messages and will not move to the Trash folder.

Using the Clear Transcript Function

This is another method and we can use it by using the clear transcript Function.

You simply need to open the conversation window that you want to delete and without selecting chat, click on the edit tab that will be on the app’s toolbar.

Now, find the option of Clear Transcript there and click on it by doing this all the messages will be deleted even if the conversation is open.

You can use the shortcut key as well to do it quickly. You need to press Option + Command + K or you can also empty space in the conversation and select the clear chat transcript option.

These are some of the best methods to delete all iMessages from MacBook or Mac permanently. If you want to delete all iMessages then these tricks will very useful for you.

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