Ryan Jones in a thread on X (mirrored):

How to Clear Local iMessage Cache

- Settings > Name > iCloud > Messages > turn off Messages in the Cloud. Follow scary prompts.

- Messages > Settings > Apple Account > Sign Out. Follow scary prompts.

- Go to /Library/Messages and delete everything

- Empty trash

- Now you have nothing iMessage local

- Just reactive iMessage in the Cloud, and sync

Friendly reminder Optimize Storage was introduced in… iOS 8.1😑

Obviously, at your own risk.

Via Michael Tsai:

I think both Photos and Messages should have settings to specify the number of GB to cache locally.

I would like something similar, but I also do not understand why Messages — in particular — behaves like it does. As far as I can tell, my Messages cache on my iMac is a full copy of Messages in my iCloud account. It is not as though Apple is treating the cloud portion as merely a syncing solution, as it used to do with something like My Photo Stream, so it is not necessarily saving space in either my iCloud account or on my devices. I would like the option to store a full copy of my Messages history on my Mac, yes, but I also think it should more aggressively purge on-device copies. Is that not a key advantage of the cloud — that I do not need to keep everything on-disk?

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