download iPhone messages for future referance
 

My phone is full. Don't want to upgrade, but I have 20 gig of messages I would like to preserve and offload off of the phone to a computer.

iTunes will back up, but I can only see them if I restore to a phone.

Has anyone used an app to preserve messages? Preferably free?

If you have a MacBook, the messages will sync up in I message on there. I have texts from 2 phones ago still on my MacBook

I went through this about a year ago trying to find something "free" to get just a couple of text messages off an iPhone. It seemed everything I found via searches was going to cost a few bucks - $10/$20 or so.

If they sync, won't they delete when I delete them from phone? They seem to on my ipad.

The sure and safe way is get a phone with more storage. You can never have too much storage. I have every text I ever sent or received, except the junk from politicians or scammers.

If you buy a refurbished older phone you can likely not spend much.

I'm not sure why but they delete on the iPad but not on the MacBook.