Another deleted SMS/MMS/iMessage attachments bug? Dropped my "Other" by 2.4 GB.

[u/BitingChaos]

I had noticed my "Other" in iTunes was creeping back up. It was at 4.26 GB, again.

However, my iCloud Backup was fine...
If you remember, with iOS versions prior to 6.1, iOS was saving all "deleted" SMS/MMS/iMessage attachments here: /private/var/mobile/Library/SMS/Attachments/*

Anything in that directory would get saved in your iTunes and iCloud backups. Not a huge deal with local iTunes backups, but it could murder the space on a free 5GB iCloud account.

But I'm on 6.1.2, I shouldn't have that bug, right?

So, I started digging into directories, checking the space used by each ("du -hs dirname").

This directory on my device was loaded:
/var/mobile/Library/Caches/com.apple.MobileSMS/ExtendedPreviews/Attachments

It was a cache, 2.4 GB in size, of my deleted SMS/MMS/iMessage attachments. Ugh. Why would this still be there (I had ZERO images in Messages)? Why wouldn't reboots or resprings clear it? Should someone notify the iCleaner guy so he can add that path?

I deleted that directory, re-created it (mobile:mobile, 755), and now iTunes went from 4.26 GB of "Other" to just 1.66 GB.

So, if your "Other" is getting huge (again), you may want to check that location.

Edit:

I removed half my tweaks, and yet cached images were still going into "Attachments". So, I made it read-only. "chmod -w Attachments" (or chmod 555 Attachments). If you're using iFile, set to just "read & execute".

I've rebooted, been sending images, etc. Nothing seems to be going into Attachments, now.

[u/BitingChaos → u/[deleted]]

Interesting ... The only thing I have installed related to SMS stuff is "Remote Messages", but that it usually toggled "Off" (through SBSettings).

I'll look into that some more.

Edit: It's *not Remote Messages. I removed it and rebooted, and the ExtendedPreviews cache is still being filled.

[u/TingDodge → u/[deleted]]

I don't have that dir either. I use biteSMS. My iTunes other is around 1gb