Have you configured the Messages app on the iPhone? Does it even need it? If you haven't, do it now, you are missing out on some useful features for organising messages and storage.

The Messages app on the iPhone and iPad is able to send text messages, photos, videos, audio recordings and more to your friends and contacts. With all the media that can be exchanged with everyone, some people can end up using a lot of storage on the iPhone or iPad and if you have an older model or even a new one with the minimum storage, it can become a problem.

Here are the ways in which you can reduce the amount of storage used by the Messages app and, if you have sufficient iCloud storage, how to use that instead of the device's.

Delete or keep messages?

Do you want to keep messages sent and received forever? That is a long time and it would use a lot of storage if those messages included media files like audio, video and photos.

Go to Settings > Messages and scroll down to Keep Messages. Press Forever and choose from 30 days or 1 year. The one-year setting seems a good compromise. Have you ever needed to access messages from more than a year ago? Set Messages to delete them if you haven't and it will use less storage space.

Expire Audio messages

Audio can be sent via the Messages app by tapping and holding the microphone button at the right side of the text box. These consume a lot more storage than plain text and the question is, how long do you want to keep them? Will you want to listen to audio messages from years ago? Probably not.

Press Expire and there are two options, expire after two minutes and never. Couldn't Apple have given us more options, like expire after a day, week or month? These options are too extreme!

If you don't need to keep audio messages after listening to them, select After 2 Minutes and you will save storage space.

Select image quality

Down at the bottom of the Messages Settings page is Low-Quality Image Mode. This does not affect incoming messages but it does affect outgoing ones. I don't know if the Messages app keeps its own copy of images sent or whether it just links to images in the Photos app. If it stores its own copy attached to messages, the storage could be significant.

Unless you really need to send top quality photos, turn on this switch and keep the storage space required to a minimum. Even if it does not affect your own storage, your friends will appreciate it. Get them to set their quality setting to low unless you really need high quality images.

Store messages in iCloud

At one time all Messages content was stored on the device, but now it can be stored in iCloud. This means that you don't need to be as concerned about the space wasted by high resolution images and audio recordings, and you can keep messages forever.

The only downside is that so many features in iOS require iCloud storage that the 5 GB you get for free is full in no time. Storing messages in iCloud is therefore only useful for people that pay for extra storage. To be fair, 50 GB is very cheap.

To turn on iCloud storage for Messages on the iPhone

1. Go to Settings
2. Press your account at the top
3. Press iCloud
4. Turn on the switch next to Messsages

The amount of storage space used and free is shown at the top of this screen, so make sure you have sufficient and press Settings > Your account > iCloud > Manage storage > Change Storage Plan if you need more.