How can I free up iCloud storage by deleting messages?

See the concept of this thread Deleting iCloud messages - Apple Community

In your ol iPhone some other iCloud data like photos , mails , notes ....etc are also occupying massive iCloud storage space , either you delete massive photos or other iCloud data so that to reduce the space or you can directly downgrade oje storage plan to free 5GB Downgrade or cancel your iCloud+ plan - Apple Support

Regarding your new iPhone for the time being don't sign in with same apple and password of old iPhone , if you do so old iCloud data from old iPhone will start syncing .

In a nutshell first reduce iCloud data from old iPhone , it's optional to sync with new iPhone , once iCloud data is reduced , and if you sync two iPhone both of them will have equal iCloud storage space .

"How can I free up iCloud storage by deleting messages?: I am so sick of my devices telling me everyday I need to buy more memory in iCloud because my 200GB is full. I admit I have too many pictures and am working on that, but Apple says I have 18GB of saved messages. I would like to go through them and delete the irrelevant ones and save the others.[...]"

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Messages Taking Up iCloud Storage:

Your messages may have movies in them, and that can consume lots of space. So, trash that part of the message, and then trash it from Recently Deleted. Save them first. Or, just disable Messages in iCloud --and oomph they'd be gone from your iCloud Storage.

Troubleshooting Full iCloud:

This is referring it iCloud Drive. So, clear out the iCloud Drive.

One unique method...

Download All of iCloud:

One thought would be to download all of iCloud to an external drive. Once downloaded, verify your can access the data. Once verified, trash what is in iCloud. As for seeing through the download, do so in Finder on a Mac. You would download it to an external drive, and then open the drive in Finder. Search through it using the search bar on the top-right corner of the Finder window. Once downloaded, trash what is in there. Use my user tip: Getting a Quick and Direct "iCloud Drive-to-External Hard Drive" Download - User Tip

Bonzeyebonny wrote:

I am so sick of my devices telling me everyday I need to buy more memory in iCloud because my 200GB is full. I admit I have too many pictures and am working on that, but Apple says I have 18GB of saved messages. I would like to go through them and delete the irrelevant ones and save the others. You might say just do it on your phone, but that's my question: How is it legal to have 18GB of my messages but I can only access them from my iPhone? I have a new phone so I don't want all the old messages loaded onto it even if I have plenty of space, but I do want to clear up some space in my iCloud. iMessage has been so buggy for me in the last couple of months as I use it on my different devices, I don't want to mess with it at all for fear of starting all my problems again. But I just find it outrageous there's no way to look at your messages except in the actual iMessage app-- on all devices.

Because your message app houses all of your message, pretty straight forward here.

There is nothing legal or illegal here, you in the leg work go into each message and delete what you don't want.