[dewey]

Don't run "du -h ~/Library/Messages" then, I've mentioned that many times before and it's crazy to me to think that Apple is just using up 100GB on my machine, just because I enable iMessage syncing and don't want to delete old conversations.

One would think that's a extremely common use case and it will only grow the more years iMessage exists. Just offload them to the cloud, charge me for it if you want but every other free message service that exists has no problem doing that.

[epistasis]

    sudo du -sh ~/Library/Messages
    Password:
    du: /Users/cvaske/Library/Messages: Operation not permitted

Wow, SIP is a bit more insidious than I remember. Maybe I should try it in Terminal.app rather than a third party app... I wonder if there will ever be a way to tell the OS "this action really was initiated by the user, not malware, let them try to do what they say they want to do"

Edit: investigating a bit more, apparently the lack of a sudo-equivalent, an "elevate this one process temporarily" command is intentional in the design, so that malicious scripts can't take advantage of that "this is really the user" approval path. I can't say I agree with that design decision, but at least it's an ethos.

[bee_rider]

Offloading to the cloud and charging the user seems like a bigger breach of expectations than the hard drive space.

[dewey]

If you have a choice there's nothing wrong with it. It's the same way that iCloud Photos already work. You can either disable iCloud and have everything locally in your Photos app or let it dynamically offload to iCloud (If you have enough cloud space).

I'd rather pay for cloud space that I'm already using anyway than having it take up my limited space on my laptop that I can't extend.

[dawnerd]

Same with photos. You can enable the option to offload but there’s no way to control how much is used locally. I don’t know why messages does that either. Also no easy way to remove the hundreds of thousands of photos in messages across all chats.

[mh-]

And for people like me who are content to pay for the iCloud storage in order to not delete them - there's no way to say "keep everything. but not locally, because that's silly."

[bensyverson]

Agreed, it should work like the iCloud Photos library; cache locally, but pull from the cloud when necessary.

[mh-]

Even with the way Photos work - which is desirable, I agree - I should be able to specify a limit on how much local disk it uses.

I don't know what the formula it uses is, but it's insufficient.

[bensyverson]

There is a workaround… You can create an APFS partition on your main drive, set it to a fixed size (e.g. 10GB), and then move the location of your Photos library to that drive.

Note that if your Photos library is already larger than you want it to be, you may need to make sure it's synced, delete it, and create a new library on the drive. It will then sync with iCloud. But that's a hassle, and I would back up the library before you do this.

[latexr]

System Settings > General > Storage. Click the ⓘ next to Messages. Sort by size and delete large attachments.

[dewey]

Appreciate the suggestion but that's similar to fixes like "Have you tried re-installing your OS, maybe that fixes the issue?".

I don't want to babysit my attachments or delete old conversations just because Apple doesn't put effort into that app. Probably my fault for still using it, but Telegram, WhatApp and Signal all manage to do it better.