I have a HTC vivid and need to delete about 30,000 texts. Every time I try to do it, it freezes my phone. The same thing happens when I try to create a backup.
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1Factory reset? Much quicker, as for 30K texts, I find that hard to believe. No wonder Android freezes as their data store holding the texts is struggling to perform the operation in deletion!– t0mm13bDec 15, 2012 at 3:41
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its true is there a way to only delete a certain amount of texts at one time that you know of?– HunterDec 15, 2012 at 4:07
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1did you try deleting batches of conversations? (i.e. try to delete 5 or 10 conversations at a time)– SidDec 15, 2012 at 6:22
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Could possibly help if you tried 3rd party apps to manage the SMS.– IrfanDec 15, 2012 at 16:00
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5 Answers
There is a way to delete all SMS and MMS (and call logs) all at once.
In Android, SMS are normally received and stored by the package com.android.providers.telephony. That package’s common name is “Phone/Messaging Storage” in Android 4.2.2 and “Dialer Storage” in Android 2.3.7.
If you clear all data of that app, all it’s databases are cleared and SMS/MMS are gone. You can “force stop” and then “clear data” with the app manager, which you find under
- Settings→Apps
- Settings→Application settings→Manage applications
If you have an alternative SMS app, note that most of them side access the “standard” database anyway. – This is technically not clean, but has the huge advantage that you can swap SMS apps at will, because the SMS storage stays the same.
answered Aug 10, 2013 at 5:32
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3I tried this, but after Force Stopping the Phone/Messaging Storage, the Clear Data button was grayed out, even though it says I have 7MB of data. Jul 24, 2016 at 4:29
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@JasonGross On my Android 5.0.2 it is the same: even stopped, the data can not be cleared in the app manager. There might be a command line way... Jul 24, 2016 at 13:06
Here the step:
- Backup All SMS using "SMS Backup & Restore" app to your externalCard
- Your devices must be rooted
- Open root explorer, go to /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databeses/mmssms.db
- if you want you can copy the current "mmssms.db" to externalCard for backup too
- Delete current "mmssms.db" file
- Restart phone
- Now all your sms will disappear, if you want restore just some of sms threads, you can restore them using "SMS Backup & Restore" app from the backup sms data that already made
Hope this help
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3Note that SMS Backup & Restore has an option to delete all the messages.– user82946Dec 5, 2014 at 17:02
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The "SMS Backup & Restore" app. has such an option indeed. It's under "Tools" as "Delete messages or call logs". You could delete nearly all of them in one go. It left the last 15 messages in the list. Dec 18, 2021 at 18:56
In Android 4.2 Jelly Bean .open standard messaging app, go to settings or press the bottom left touch key to show options/settings within the app. select/press Delete> Select All> Delete.
You might also try using a phone manager via your PC that works over Wifi, such as AirDroid. You should be able to delete from there, but not all of them at once I don't think, but in batches at least...
If a factory reset isn't acceptable, you might try an app such as Handcent, which allows you to set a limit on how many messages are kept for each sender. Set the limit to 29000 and see if it trims them down in a reasonable time. If that works, try dropping the limit 2000 at a time until you get to the number you want. This won't work if your messages are from many different senders.
