This article was reviewed by Luigi Oppido and by wikiHow staff writer, Rain Kengly. Luigi Oppido is the Owner and Operator of Pleasure Point Computers in Santa Cruz, California. Luigi has over 25 years of experience in general computer repair, data recovery, virus removal, and upgrades. He is also the host of the Computer Man Show! broadcasted on KSQD covering central California for over two years.
This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources.
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Are older texts on your iPhone or iPad being deleted after a few months? You can choose to keep your messages for 30 days, 1 year, or forever. Here's how to turn off auto-delete old conversations on your iPhone and iPad.
Quick Steps
- Open Settings.
- Tap Apps.
- Tap Messages.
- Tap Keep Messages.
- Tap Forever.
Steps
Disabling Auto Delete
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Open Settings. This is the cog icon.
- When this feature is set to anything other than Forever, it will permanently delete older messages. If needed, you can try to recover deleted messages.
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Tap Apps. If you're using an older version of iOS, you can skip this step.Advertisement
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Tap Messages. This is next to the speech bubble icon.
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Tap Keep Messages. You can find this towards the bottom of the page; you may need to scroll down to find it.
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Tap Forever. Messages will no longer be deleted automatically from your device.
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