How to Use 'Review Large Attachments' on iPhone (and What It Misses)
Review Large Attachments lives at Settings › General › iPhone Storage › Review Large Attachments, and it lists the biggest photos, videos, and files you have received or sent in Messages, sorted largest-first so you can swipe to delete them. It is one of the fastest single wins on a full iPhone, but it only ever looks inside Messages. This guide is for anyone who tapped that recommendation, freed a couple of gigabytes, and then wondered why their storage is still tight.
TL;DR
- Find it at Settings › General › iPhone Storage › Review Large Attachments — it ranks Messages media by size.
- Swipe left on any row to delete, or tap Edit to select several and remove them in one pass.
- It only scans Messages — not your Camera Roll, not WhatsApp, not Mail, not other apps.
- It ignores duplicates and similar photos, so the heaviest clutter on most phones stays untouched.
- For a whole-library pass over large videos and duplicates, pair it with a local-only cleaner.
What is Review Large Attachments and where do I find it?
Review Large Attachments is one of the Recommendations iOS surfaces at the top of your storage screen. It scans every conversation in Messages and pulls out the heaviest items — long videos, bursts of high-resolution photos, voice memos, PDFs, and other files — then ranks them so the biggest offenders sit at the top. To open it:
- Go to Settings › General › iPhone Storage.
- Wait a few seconds for the bar graph and Recommendations to render.
- Tap Review Large Attachments (it usually shows an estimate like "2.4 GB").
- The list opens already sorted largest-first.
If you don't see the recommendation, you may simply not have enough heavy Messages media to trigger it, or you have run it recently. The screen reflects what is in Messages right now, so it changes as your conversations do.
How do I delete large attachments quickly?
The list is built for fast triage. You have two ways to clear items:
- Swipe to delete one item: swipe left on any row and tap the trash icon. The attachment is removed from the conversation immediately.
- Bulk delete several: tap Edit (or Select) in the top corner, tick the items you want gone, then tap the trash icon to remove them all at once.
Because the list is sorted by size, the first handful of rows almost always account for most of the reclaimable space — a single 4K video can be larger than a hundred text threads. Work top-down and stop once the numbers get small. There is no separate "are you sure" trash here: deleting an attachment removes it from the Messages conversation, though the message bubble itself can remain as text.
| Action | How | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Delete one | Swipe left, tap trash | A single huge video you spotted |
| Bulk delete | Edit › select › trash | Clearing the top 10–20 in one pass |
| Sort | Already largest-first | Finding the biggest items fast |
| Preview | Tap the thumbnail | Checking before you delete |
What does Review Large Attachments actually miss?
This is where most people get caught out. The tool is narrow by design, and the gaps are large. It misses:
- Your Camera Roll entirely. The photos and videos you shot with the camera are not Messages attachments, so none of them appear here — and for most people the Camera Roll is the single biggest category on the phone.
- Other apps' media. WhatsApp, Telegram, Mail, Signal, and saved downloads all hold their own large files. Review Large Attachments cannot see any of them.
- Duplicates and similar shots. It ranks by size, never by similarity, so ten near-identical bursts of the same sunset are ten separate large items — it will never tell you they are essentially the same photo.
- A cross-app overview. There is no single screen where you preview the largest media across Messages, the Camera Roll, and other apps together, then bulk-remove. You are stuck reviewing one silo at a time.
So it is a genuine quick win for one source of clutter, but it is not a storage cleanup. If your phone is still full after running it, that is expected — the heavy stuff usually lives in the Camera Roll, not in Messages.
Where does the rest of the heavy storage usually hide?
Once Messages is trimmed, work the categories the recommendation can't reach. On most iPhones the order of weight looks like this:
| Category | Typically heaviest | Covered by Review Large Attachments? |
|---|---|---|
| Camera Roll videos | Yes (often the #1 hog) | No |
| Duplicate / similar photos | Yes | No |
| WhatsApp / Telegram media | Often | No |
| Messages attachments | Sometimes | Yes |
| App caches & Documents & Data | Sometimes | No |
To find the biggest non-Messages items, scroll the per-app list on the same iPhone Storage screen and tap any heavy app to see its Documents & Data. For the Camera Roll specifically, the Photos app shows large videos under Albums › Media Types › Videos, but it will not group duplicates for you. For the full triage order across every category, see storage full: what should I delete first, and to understand a mysteriously large catch-all category, read what is System Data and can you delete it.
Is it safe to delete large attachments this way?
Mostly yes, with one caveat worth knowing. Deleting an attachment here removes that photo, video, or file from the Messages conversation permanently — there is no Recently Deleted album for Messages attachments the way there is for the Photos app. So if a clip in a thread is the only copy you have, save it to your Camera Roll first (tap it, then Save), and it will sync to iCloud Photos if that is on. Items you have already saved or that exist elsewhere are safe to clear, because you are only removing the redundant copy held inside Messages.
Native tools like this are the safe starting point: they only touch Messages and never your accounts. A third-party cleaner earns its place when the job moves beyond Messages — grouped review of duplicates, similar shots, and large videos across the whole library. The safer kind processes everything locally and shows you a preview before anything is removed; for the trade-offs, read the truth about cleaner apps and whether they are safe to use.
FAQ
Where is Review Large Attachments on my iPhone?
It is at Settings › General › iPhone Storage, listed under Recommendations at the top of the screen. If it isn't showing, you likely don't have enough large Messages media to trigger it, or it ran recently and there's little left to clear.
Does Review Large Attachments delete photos from my Camera Roll?
No. It only removes attachments stored inside Messages conversations. Photos and videos you took with the camera live in the Photos app and are untouched by this tool.
Why is my storage still full after using Review Large Attachments?
Because it only scans Messages. The heaviest clutter on most iPhones is in the Camera Roll — large videos and duplicate shots — plus media held by apps like WhatsApp, none of which this recommendation can see.
Can I get back an attachment I deleted by accident?
Usually not. Unlike the Photos app, Messages attachments don't go to a Recently Deleted album, so deletion is immediate. Save anything you might want to your Camera Roll before clearing it.
Clear the rest, not just Messages
Review Large Attachments handles one silo well; the durable fix is covering the silos it ignores. To trim the Camera Roll, see how to delete photos but keep them in the cloud and duplicate vs similar photos: what to delete. To automate the whole-library pass, the phone storage cleanup solution and Cleanor for iOS scan your large videos and duplicates in one go, locally on the device, with a preview before anything is deleted.