How to delete messages from instagram chat

How to Delete Your Instagram Messages

You can delete your Instagram messages in two ways, both through the mobile app.
Instagram's private messages menu lets you delete an entire conversation at once.
Holding your finger on a message you've sent will let you "unsend" and delete that message.

While Instagram is mainly a platform for posting photos, it also offers its own private messaging system. And like most messaging services, you have full control over which messages get saved and which get deleted.

If your inbox is filling up, there are two ways to delete your Instagram messages. You can both delete entire conversations and delete individual messages you've sent.

How to delete your Instagram messages

These steps work for both the iPhone and Android Instagram apps.

Deleting entire conversations

1. Open Instagram and tap the messages icon in the top-right corner, which looks like a paper airplane.

2. On the messages page, tap the icon in the top-right that looks like a bulleted list.

3. Tap all the conversations that you want to delete, then tap Delete in the bottom-right corner.

Highlight and delete the conversations you don't want. Instagram; William Antonelli/Insider

4. Confirm that you want to delete the conversations.

Remember that the other person (or people) in the conversation will still be able to see the messages, unless they delete it themselves.

Delete your own individual messages

If you've sent a message that you later decide you want to take back, you can delete it using the "Unsend" option. This will delete it for everyone in the conversation.

1. Open Instagram again and find the message that you want to delete.

2. Press and hold your finger on the message that you want to unsend.

3. When a pop-up menu appears, select the Unsend option and confirm that you want to delete it.

Tap "Unsend." Instagram; Jennifer Still/Insider; William Antonelli/Insider

Note that while unsending a message will delete it for everyone, sending a message might still notify everyone else in the conversation.

Jennifer Still contributed to a previous version of this article.

William Antonelli

Tech Reporter for Insider Reviews

William Antonelli (he/she/they) is a writer, editor, and organizer based in New York City. As a founding member of the Reference team, he helped grow Tech Reference (now part of Insider Reviews) from humble beginnings into a juggernaut that attracts over 20 million visits a month. Outside of Insider, his writing has appeared in publications like Polygon, The Outline, Kotaku, and more. He's also a go-to source for tech analysis on channels like Newsy, Cheddar, and NewsNation. You can find him on Twitter @DubsRewatcher, or reach him by email at [email protected].

How To Delete All of Your Instagram Direct Messages

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One of the most popular Instagram features is the Direct Message (DM) feature. With DMs, users can privately chat one-on-one with their friends or create group chats. While several messaging apps are available, many people use Instagram as their leading instant messaging service.

At the same time, Instagram didn’t get designed to organize a whole chat log of DMs, and it shows in the relative lack of tools for managing your DM inbox. Your inbox can quickly become cluttered between messages from your friends, spam, and sketchy links sent by scammers.

So, Is there a way to delete all of your messages at once and get a fresh start? This article explains a few options to clean up your Instagram DMs.

How to Delete Conversations on Android and iPhone/iOS

To delete a conversation, perform the following steps:

Tap the message icon (paper airplane) at the top-right of your home screen.
Tap the conversation that you want to delete and drag it to the left or long-press it to bring up the message options.
Select Delete.

Once you complete the steps above, the group messages no longer appear in your inbox. Keep in mind that the other person still has access to them.

If you’re trying to get rid of specific conversations, you can also use the Search function to find those messages rather than scrolling through your entire DM inbox. You can type a person’s name in the search bar at the top of your screen to find and delete your conversation with them.

Delete Individual Messages on Android and iPhone/iOS

Instagram quietly introduced the Unsend feature a few years ago. It allows you to un-send messages that haven’t been read yet.

If you’ve never used Unsend on Instagram before, here’s what you need to do:

Open up the DM conversation
Tap and Hold the unwanted message
Select Unsend Message.

The steps above delete the message on both ends, so it’s like you never sent it at all. If you ever send a message that you later regret, you can delete it before the other person sees it. Otherwise, you are out of luck.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to bulk-delete individual messages within Instagram, so you’ll have to repeat the above steps for every message. Of course, you can always try using a third-party auto-clicking app.

Delete All of Your Instagram Direct Messages with AutoClicker on Android/iPhone/iOS

AutoClicker for Android and AutoClicker for iOS are tools that let you automate repeated taps and swipes in any app or screen on your device. Once you play around with it, you will be very excited by the possibilities this powerful free program provides. However, for now, this article focuses on deleting your DMs on Instagram.

Launch your Instagram app.
Launch the Auto Clicker app.
In the Multi Targets Mode section, tap Enable. This will allow you to have multiple points of tapping with a delay between taps.
On Instagram, go to your Direct Messages screen.
Tap and hold the green plus symbol to create a swipe point, a circle with the number 1 inside it. Drag the swipe point to the first conversation in your DMs.
Move the second circle inside the first circle. This process instructs AutoClicker to tap and hold.
Tap the circle to bring up the Settings dialog for this swipe. Set the delay to 1000 milliseconds and the swipe time to 1000 milliseconds.
On Instagram, long-tap on the first conversation to actually move the process along so that you can see where to do the next taps.
The context menu appears. Tap on the + icon to add a tap point, and drag the tap point to the line of the context menu reading Delete. This tap point becomes #2 and will have a 2 in the circle.
On Instagram, tap the delete line to move the process along again.
Tap on the + icon to create tap point 3, and drag the tap point to the appropriate spot.
Hit cancel to not delete this conversation at this point.
Tap the gear icon and give this tap script (they call it a configuration) a name. Save the script, and now you can run this command repeatedly for hundreds or thousands of iterations, automatically and without any human oversight.
Hit the blue Run arrow to execute your script.

You can turn off the AutoClicker app interface by disabling it on the AutoClicker app home screen.

AutoClicker is, without a doubt, a powerful tool that you can use in many ways, not just for speeding up your Instagram DM deletion process!

Deleting Instagram Direct Messages FAQs

Does blocking someone on Instagram delete all messages?

No, blocking Instagram users has nothing to do with sent messages. If you choose to block someone on Instagram and go back to their message thread, the “Delete” option will appear. If you choose to remove the messages, they will only get deleted on your end. The other user can still see all of the communications you’ve sent.

The only way to remove messages from someone else’s account is to un-send them, but they must not have read them yet. Open the Instagram DMs, tap on their message thread, and long-press each message you’ve sent, then tap “Unsend Message.” Depending on your level of determination to remove each message you’ve sent to the user, this could take an incredibly long time, but it’s certainly a helpful feature.

Can you delete all Instagram DMs at once?

Unfortunately, Instagram does not support deleting all your messages simultaneously, not even when using third-party DM deleting apps. You have to manually delete each conversation, one by one, unless you use an app such as AutoClicker that sets automatic clicks.

Regardless of setbacks, you can delete entire conversations in one go. This option means you’ll only have to repeat the deletion process once per conversation, not once per message. It’s still a pain, but it’s a lot better than having to do it one message at a time.

How to delete a message on Instagram - all ways to clear the correspondence

Content of the article:

Deleting messages for yourself and the other party
- How to delete a message from direct on phone
- Deleting a message from direct on a computer
Delete entire dialog
- On a mobile device for IOS and Android
- On PC
Deleting all or several dialogs
Sending disappearing messages
- Sending disappearing photos and videos
- Sending disappearing text
How to recover deleted correspondence
- Restoring correspondence without backups
- Data storage applications

Is it possible to delete a message on Instagram

Of course, you can delete a message from an Instagram conversation, but there are a few nuances. And before deleting messages from public or private dialogs, you need to weigh all the pros and cons and only then start cleaning.

First, when you delete an individual message from a chat, it is deleted from all other participants in the conversation. That is, you can delete the message immediately for everyone who participated in the conversation, and not just for a specific user.

Secondly, when you delete the dialogue completely, and not individually for each message, the messages will remain unchanged for all other chat participants or an individual interlocutor if the communication was face to face. That is, you can delete the entire chat only from your own list of dialogues in direct, but nothing will change for your interlocutor (s).

Thirdly, deleted correspondence cannot be restored if there are no complaints about it from other participants in the correspondence. Direct does not have an archive like stories and it will not be possible to restore it as memories.

Fourth, it is possible to cancel sending a message (delete), but it is better to think several times before sending information that you will have to regret later. After all, the interlocutor can see it before you have time to cancel the send.

Next, we will analyze each case separately, when you need to delete individual messages in a dialog, when you need to delete the entire dialog and delete all or several dialogs in your account.

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Deleting messages for yourself and the other person

Please note that when you delete a phrase from a conversation, it disappears both for you and for another user. However, if the correspondence is complained about, the data can be restored for verification.

We recommend that you do not send confidential information in private messages, send photos that are too personal, and save your login information.

Even if the correspondence can be deleted, there is always a chance that another user managed to take a screenshot of the screen and the data will be saved forever.

How to delete a message from direct on your phone

To share a single message from direct to Instagram from your phone, do the following:

Open the list of conversations in direct. To do this, click on the icon in the upper right corner.
Open the chat you want to edit.
Find the message you want to get rid of. Hold the text with a long press.
Click on the "More" option in the lower right corner. From the pop-up menu, select the "Cancel Send" option.

Deleting a single message in direct correspondence

This method of cleaning correspondence is useful for those who want their messages to disappear not only for the sender, but also for the interlocutor (addressee).

Deleting a message from direct on a computer

The process of deleting individual messages in an Instagram conversation from a computer has some peculiarities.

To delete a conversation from Direct, do the following:

Log in to your account from a computer and open the list of dialogs.
Select the chat where you want to delete the message.
Find the message and move your mouse over it. Three icons will appear on the left side of the phrase.
Select the icon with three dots to the left of the message. After clicking, you will see several actions that you can perform - "Share", "Copy", "Forward" and "Undo Send". If you want to delete the selected phrase, select the "Cancel Send" option.

Deleting a message on the computer

Deleting the entire conversation

Sometimes deleting one or more phrases is not enough. In this case, getting rid of the chat completely will help. We remind you once again that in this case, the correspondence will remain unchanged with your interlocutor, it will disappear only with you.

On a mobile device for IOS and Android

Instructions for deleting a direct dialogue from your phone will be different depending on the type of your device.

You can delete correspondence from the iPhone as follows:

Log in to your account and go to the section with private messages.
Select the chat you want to get rid of. You can do this by scrolling down the feed, or use the search at the top of the screen.
Swipe the dialogue to the left or hold it down until the menu appears Click on the "More" button.
In the context menu that opens, click "Delete".
Pay attention to the warning that will appear on the screen. The chat with the user will be permanently deleted.
Press the option again to confirm the action.

Deleting the entire dialogue

The principle of deleting a dialogue from Instagram from Android is very similar, but has some differences.

Sign in to your account, go to direct.
Select the chat you want to get rid of. You can do this by scrolling down the feed, or use the search at the top of the screen.
Press and hold the dialog until the context menu appears.
Select "Delete".
Pay attention to the warning that will appear on the screen. The chat with the user will be permanently deleted.

On a PC

It is not possible to completely delete a direct dialogue from a computer. There is currently no such feature, but you can share one or more messages from the dialog itself.

Delete all or several dialogs

Instagram has provided such a function as deleting all or several correspondence in a few touches. For those people who often and in large numbers receive direct messages from different profiles and conduct active correspondence, this functionality will be extremely useful.

Important! Deleting the entire conversation thread only clears the owner's account, but does not make changes to the accounts of the interlocutors. If you need to delete a message from the interlocutor too, then clean the messages one by one in each chat.

To delete several chats at once, follow the following algorithm:

Log in to instagram direct;
Click on the list icon;
Mark those chats that need to be cleared, a menu will appear below;
Click on the corresponding function;
Confirm action.

Deleting several dialogs

Sending disappearing messages

In order not to create unnecessary hassle for erasing correspondence, you can insure yourself in advance and send a disappearing message.

The disappearing message can be a photo, video or text. Information disappears immediately after viewing, and it is impossible to see it again.

Sending disappearing photos and videos

To send such a message, do the following:

Open direct and select correspondence with the user or group chat.
Click on the camera icon. The camera mode will open in front of you. Take a photo, apply an effect if necessary.
Drag the bar below the photo to change the view mode to "Single view", "Allow re-view" or "Keep in chat".

Disappearing photos

Sending disappearing text

If you want to send a text message in such a way that after viewing it disappears, you need to switch to the corresponding mode. For this you need:

Open a dialog with the user
Swipe up to enable disappearing messages;
Write text;
Send a message;

Disappearing messages

After the text is read by the addressee, it will disappear from the dialog

Please note that it is impossible to see the disappearing message from the computer. This feature is only present in the mobile app.

How to restore deleted correspondence

It is impossible to restore deleted correspondence using standard means of a mobile application and without having certain skills, as well as a set of certain programs.

This is why the Instagram system warns the user that the chat is permanently deleted.

Restoring a conversation without backups

If you deleted the whole conversation, and not just a single message, then you can ask the other person to take a screenshot and send the image to you.

You can try recovering deleted data via Facebook if your two accounts are linked.

Log in to your Facebook account, go to the business page to which your Instagram profile is linked;
Select the menu item "Inbox";
Click on the Instagram Direct option in the left pane.

Restoring correspondence via Facebook

If the dialogs are saved, you will see them in this section.

This method of restoring correspondence is available only for business accounts and for those profiles whose Instagram is linked to a Facebook account.

Another way to restore correspondence is to use the data download function from Instagram.

This can only be done when using Instagram from a computer.

Keep in mind that in this case you will receive not only the restored text of the correspondence, but also all the rest of your account data.

Do the following:

Log in to your account from a PC, click on the profile icon;
Click on the "Settings" item from the drop-down menu;
On the left side of the screen, select the "Privacy and Security" tab;
Scroll down to the Download Data section;
Select the "Request File" function. A new page will open in front of you, where you can select the type of downloaded file and enter the email address to which you want to send the data.

Backup download

Applications for saving data

There is a special application for recovering deleted data from Instagram - Instagram Message Recovery.

To use the application's features, do the following:

Sign in to the app and enter your Instagram account login information.
Click on the message you want to recover.
Confirm your selection again.

We hope that in this article you have found answers to all your questions and now you know how to delete and restore messages in Instagram correspondence.

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