Clear iMessage Chat History in Mac OS X

[Geek]

<div class="KonaBody"><p><img src="http://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/iMessages-for-Mac.jpeg" alt="iMessages for Mac" title="iMessages-for-Mac" width="620" height="325" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-28039" /></p>

<p>iMessage keeps track of chat history, providing you with a lengthy record of conversations in a scrollable chat log. Unlike iOS, there isn’t an in-app method to delete the chat history in OS X (yet), instead you will have to turn to the Finder or command line:</p>

<ul>

<li>Quit out of Messages for Mac</li>

<li>Hit Command+Shift+G to bring up the “Go To Folder” window</li>

<li>Enter ~/Library/Messages/</li>

<li>Select all files in the Messages directory and move to trash, files will be named chat.db, chat.db-shm, chat.db-wal, etc</li>

<li>Empty the Trash and relaunch iMessages</li>

</ul>

<p><img src="http://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/clear-imessage-chat-history.jpg" alt="Clear iMessage Chat History" title="clear-imessage-chat-history" width="620" height="303" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-28037" /></p>

<p>You can also do this through the command line. Quit out of iMessage and open Terminal, at the prompt type the following:</p>

<p><code>rm -r ~/Library/Messages/chat.*</code></p>

<p>Relaunch iMessages and to find an empty chat history.</p>

<p>Remember that iMessages for Mac is currently in <a href="http://osxdaily.com/2012/02/16/messages-for-mac-beta-download/">beta</a>, there will probably be an easier way to delete chat history in the final version when it ships this summer with OS X Mountain Lion.</p>

<p><em>Thanks for the tip Kevin!</em></p>

</div>

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