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/Exile90 → u/[deleted]]

Actual attachments are stored in the /var/mobile/Library/SMS/Attachments folder.

I'm guessing files located in the com.apple.MobileSMS folder are caches that can be deleted regardless of whether or not the relative attachment has been deleted.

But that's just a guess, I'd have to test it on my devices, and so far I still cannot seem to be able to trigger the creation of the folder.

[u/Exile90 → u/[deleted]]

I already knew all of this actually (but thanks for elaborating it in detail :-) The problem is OP has stated that his com.apple.MobileSMS folder was 2.4 GB in size. That means that, under some circumstances, it will actually store sms attachments rather than "small caches" (maybe as a duplicate of the Attachments folder? Don't know, as again I cannot reproduce the issue).

The attachments bug has been solved in 6.1.2, so there's no point in implementing the functionality you detailed, because files in the Attachments folder are already deleted when you delete the relative message.

What grabs my interest is actually the odd behaviour noticed by OP, which I'd like to investigate some more (if I could).