How to Clean Up Messages on Xiaomi: The Complete Guide

Modern smartphones, especially Xiaomi models, allow us to receive hundreds of notifications, confirmation codes and private messages every day. Over time, the SMS archive grows to incredible sizes, which can lead to slowdowns or trivial overflow of internal memory. Users often face a situation where standard deleting dialogs one by one takes too long, and automatic cleaners do not always cope with the task effectively.

The MIUI operating shell and the new HyperOS have messaging features that are different from pure Android. It’s important to understand the difference between simply deleting emails and completely cleaning up an application’s cache, which can take hundreds of megabytes. In this article, we’ll look at all available methods for freeing up space, including hidden functions and working with system databases.

Before we start taking drastic measures, it is worth assessing whether the problem is really in text messages or memory is filled with multimedia MMS attachments. Often it is heavy pictures and video in dialogues that occupy the bulk of the storage, while text data weighs negligible. Proper diagnosis will help you choose the right way to clean without risking losing important information.

Standard removal of dialogs in the Messages app

The most obvious and safe way to clean up your conversation is to use the app’s built-in functionality. In a standard Google Messages client or Xiaomi’s proprietary app, the algorithm is almost identical, but it has its own nuances in the interface, you need to open the app, find an unnecessary dialogue, and press it with your finger, holding it for a few seconds before the selection menu appears.

Once you activate the allocation mode, you can select multiple contacts at once, which greatly speeds up the process. Note the top toolbar: there are often additional sorting or mass removal options hidden there. If you accidentally highlight the excess, re-clicking on the contact avatar will remove the tag.

To remove all correspondence at once, some versions of the shell have a "Clear All" feature, but it is often hidden in the settings menu or only available when all dialogs are selected. Be careful: once the action is confirmed, it will be impossible to restore texts without prior backup.

• 📱 Open the Messages app on the home screen or in the Tools folder".
• 🗑️ Press and hold your finger on the dialog that you want to remove.
• ✅ Select all other unnecessary chats by touching them.
• 🔘 Click the Remove button (basket icon) at the bottom or top of the screen.

⚠️ Note: Removed in the standard way SMS-messages do not fall into the basket and cannot be restored through the regular funds of the system.

On the sender side or in the carrier’s cloud services, they can be stored according to their data retention policy. If you plan to sell a phone, simply removing the dialogs is not enough – you will need a complete reset.

Cleaning the cache and data of the message application

Sometimes the problem is not the number of messages, but the accumulated garbage of the system. The Message application, like any other software component, saves temporary files, thumbnails of images and logs of work. Cleaning this data is safe for your correspondence, if you choose the right menu item, but requires care.

To access the application memory management, go to the system settings. Find the Apps section, then select All Apps and find Messages (or Mi Messages) in the list. Inside the application management menu, you're interested in the Memory tab. Here you'll see the two main buttons: Clear Cache and Clear Everything (or Reset).

Using the Clean Cache function is completely safe and recommended as a regular prevention procedure, it only deletes temporary files, speeding up the application. However, the Clean All or Reset button will return the application to factory state, removing all settings and, in some cases, can lead to the loss of out-of-sync drafts or specific notification settings.

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Use the “Clear Cache” function regularly to prevent the application from freezing when receiving large amounts of SMS from service services.

If the app continues to work incorrectly after cleaning the cache, you can try to remove its updates.This will return the system version of the application that was installed in the factory.

Using Xiaomi's built-in cleaner

In the shell. MIUI And HyperOS has a powerful built-in tool for optimizing the system that's often ignored, and it can find junk files, including old or too big. SMS-chains that you might have missed in manual checks, and you can run them through the Security app or the Cleanup widget on your desktop.

Once the scan is running, the system will suggest clearing different categories of files, we're interested in a section related to messages or media, the cleaner will analyze the MMS attachments and suggest removing the ones that weigh the most, which is a great way to quickly free up a few gigabytes without touching the text part of the correspondence.

But be careful: an automated algorithm can tag important bank codes or work instructions as spam. Always check the contents before final cleanup confirmation. Unlike manual deletion, you're working with files, not database records.

Delete messages via computer (ADB)

For advanced users who need to clear messages on multiple devices or delete specific records that are not deleted through the interface, there is a method using USB debugging.This method requires connecting the smartphone to a PC and having ADB drivers installed. It allows you to directly interact with the SMS database.

The first step is to activate the developer mode. → About the phone and seven times quickly click on the version MIUI. Then in the advanced settings, turn on "Debugging by" USB". Connect the phone to your computer and enter a command to check the connection:

adb devices

Once you have confirmed authorization on your phone screen, you can execute a command to delete all messages. Be very careful: the command below deletes absolutely all SMS without the possibility of recovery through the basket. It acts directly on the database table mmssms.db.

adb shell content delete --uri sms:/sms

⚠️ Attention: Use of teams ADB A syntax error can result in the deletion of the wrong data or unstable operation of the system.

If your goal is to delete only certain messages, the process is complicated by the need to know their ID in the database. For ordinary users, this method is redundant, but it is the only way to “hard” clean up when the phone’s software interface is locked or malfunctioning.

Working with MMS and multimedia attachments

The main memory in the message section is not text, but MMS attachments. Photos, voice messages and stickers that come through the standard SMS / MMS protocol are stored in separate folders of the system. Even if you delete the dialog in the application, the files can remain in the phone's memory as "orphaned".

To find them, open the Explorer or Files app. Go to the root folder or the Internal Memory section. Look for folders called MIUI, then gallery, cloud, or cache. Often attachments are saved in hidden system directories, the path to which may look like /data/data/com.android.mms/, but access is only possible with superuser rights (Root).

The easiest way to do this is to search by file, type in the Explorer extension.jpg,.png or.mp4, and sort the results by date or size, and you can find hundreds of old images from group chats that are no longer relevant, and deleting them will free up a lot of space.

Don’t forget to check the Downloads folder. Many users don’t know that some types of files that are sent to messages can automatically be saved there, rather than to the gallery. Regularly reviewing this folder is a good habit for the owner of Xiaomi.

Alternative applications for SMS management

If a standard application from Xiaomi or Google seems inconvenient for mass cleaning, you can use specialized utilities from the Play Market store. There are many message managers that provide advanced sorting, archiving and batch removal functionality.

Popular solutions such as SMS Organizer or Messages+ allow you to filter messages by type (transactional, personal, spam), which allows you to remove thousands of advertising SMS from stores and delivery services, which usually make up the lion’s share of junk.

When you install a third-party application, the system will ask for permission to access SMS and contacts, which is a mandatory requirement for the software to work, and make sure that you only download software from trusted developers so that you don't pass your confirmation codes to scammers.

• 📥 Download a reliable message manager from Google Play.
• 🔐 Provide the necessary permissions at the first launch.
• 📂 Use filters to sort messages by sender or date.
• 🗑️ Use the function "Remove everything from..." or "Remove more than 30 days".

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Third-party applications allow you to delete messages according to complex criteria (for example, "all messages from unknown numbers"), which is not possible in a standard interface.

Synchronization and backup before cleaning

Before permanently deleting your correspondence history, it is strongly recommended to back up your emails. In the Xiaomi ecosystem, this can be done via Mi Cloud or locally to your device. Backup ensures that in the event of an error or a change in your smartphone, you can recover important codes and memory messages.

To create a local copy, go to Settings → About Phone → Backup and Restore. Select a new backup and make sure the Messages (SMS/MMS) item is marked in the data list. Once the process is complete, the file (usually with the extension.bak) will be saved to internal memory.

It is important to copy this backup file to your computer or to cloud storage (for example, Google Drive or Yandex.Disk), since when you reset your phone to factory settings, the internal memory will be completely cleared.