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One of the most popular features on Instagram is the direct messaging (DM) feature. With direct messages, users can chat privately with their friends or create group chats. While there are several messaging apps available, many people use Instagram as their primary instant messaging service.
At the same time, Instagram wasn’t designed to organize a full DM log, and it shows in the relative lack of tools to manage your DM inbox. Your inbox can quickly fill up with messages from your friends, spam, and dubious links sent by scammers.
So is there any way to delete all your messages once and start again? This article explains some options for cleaning up your Instagram direct messages.
How to delete conversations on Android and iPhone/iOS
To delete a conversation, perform the following steps:
- Tap on the message icon (paper airplane) at the top right of the home screen.
- Tap the conversation you want to delete and drag it to the left or long-press to bring up the message options.
- Select Delete.
Once you complete the steps above, group messages will 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 Look for feature to find those messages instead of scrolling through your entire DM inbox. You can type a person’s name into the search bar at the top of the screen to search for them and delete your conversation with them.
Delete inpidual messages on Android and iPhone/iOS
Instagram quietly introduced the Unsend feature a few years ago. Allows you to cancel sending messages that have not yet been read.
If you’ve never used Unsend on Instagram before, here’s what you need to do:
- Open the DM conversation
- Press and hold on unwanted message
- Select Stop sending message.
The steps above delete the message on both ends, so it’s as if you never sent it. If you ever send a message that you later regret, you can delete it before the other person sees it. Otherwise, you’re out of luck.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to delete inpidual messages in bulk within Instagram, so you’ll have to repeat the steps above for each message. Of course, you can always try using a third-party auto-clicker app.
Delete All Your Instagram Direct Messages with AutoClicker on Android/iPhone/iOS
AutoClicker for Android and AutoClicker for iOS are tools that allow you to automate repeated taps and swipes on any app or screen on your device. Once you play with it, you will be very excited about the possibilities that this powerful free program offers. However, for now, this article focuses on deleting your direct messages on Instagram.
- Throw your instagram application.
- Start the Automatic click application.
- In it Multi-target mode section, touch Allow. This will allow you to have multiple tapping points with a delay between taps.
- On Instagram, go to your Direct messages screen.
- Press and hold the green plus symbol to create a slide point, a circle with the number 1 inside that. Drag the slip point to the first conversation in your DMs.
- Move the second circle within first circle. This process instructs Automatic click to tap and hold.
- Tap on the circle to bring out the Settings dialog box for this slide. Set the delay to 1000 milliseconds and the time to swipe to 1000 milliseconds.
- On Instagram, press and hold first conversation to advance the process and be able to see where to make the next touches.
- The context menu appears. Play the + icon to add a touch point and drag the touch point to the reading line of the context menu Delete. This touch point becomes the number 2 and will have a 2 in the circle.
- On Instagram, tap the delete line to move the process forward again.
- Play the + icon to create the touch point 3 and drag the touch point to the appropriate place.
- Hit Cancel Do not delete this conversation at this time.
- Tap on the gear icon and give this tap script a name (they call it configuration). Save the script and you can now run this command repeatedly for hundreds or thousands of iterations, automatically and without human supervision.
- Hit the blue arrow Run to run your script.
You can disable the AutoClicker app interface by disabling it on the AutoClicker app home screen.
AutoClicker is undoubtedly a powerful tool that you can use in many ways, not just to speed up the process of deleting Instagram direct messages!
Frequently asked questions about deleting Instagram direct messages
Does blocking someone on Instagram delete all messages?
No, blocking Instagram users has nothing to do with the messages sent. If you choose to block someone on Instagram and return to their message thread, the “Delete” option will appear. If you choose to delete messages, they will only be deleted by you. The other user will still be able to see all communications you have sent.
The only way to delete messages from someone else’s account is to unsend them, but that person must not have read them yet. Open Instagram direct messages, tap your message thread and hold each message you’ve sent, then tap “Cancel message.” Depending on your level of determination to delete every message you’ve ever sent to the user, this could take an incredibly long time, but it’s certainly a useful feature.
Can you delete all Instagram DMs at once?
Unfortunately, Instagram doesn’t support deleting all of your messages simultaneously, even when you use third-party direct message deletion apps. You have to manually delete each conversation, one by one, unless you use an app like AutoClicker that sets up automatic clicks.
Regardless of the hiccups, you can delete entire conversations in one go. This option means that you will only have to repeat the deletion process once per conversation, not once per message. It’s still a pain, but it’s much better than having to do it one message at a time.
