Bulk Cleanup: Tips for Eradicating Unwanted Messages in Discord

How To Delete Messages On Discord [2024 Updated]

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Discord allows users to hold onto their message history forever, storing billions of messages in a blog post. And unlike other apps, Discord does not allow users to mass-delete their message history. For some, that can sound like a nightmare because of privacy and security reasons. You will have to wade through every message, deleting each of them, one by one.

However, if you find yourself in that position, fret not because there are several solutions to help you get around this limitation. Unfortunately, none of them are perfect.

Since there is no official method of mass deleting messages, these workarounds are shoddy, but until Discord offers an official solution, we’ll have to do with them.

If you’re looking to mass-delete your messages from a server or channel on Discord, here’s how you will go about it for the desktop and mobile versions:

• Part 1: Understanding Discord Message Types
• Part 2: How to Delete Direct Messages on Discord
• Part 3: Deleting Channel Messages in Discord
• Part 4: Deleting Messages with Discord Clear Chat Bot
• Part 5: Clear All Chats and Delete All Messages In Discord

Part 1: Understanding Discord Message Types

In Discord, you will see two types of messages: Direct Messages and Channel Messages in servers. Here are the differences between the two:

• Direct Messages: These messages are private and held between two users
• Channel Messages: These messages are sent in a channel or a specific group

Both of these message types abide by different rules and functions. In the early days of Discord, users had the luxury of deleting messages in bulk.

However, this was soon changed because the mass execution directly affected the app’s database. Since then, the application has adopted specific rules regarding message deletion.

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Part 2: How to Delete Direct Messages on Discord

If you use Discord on your desktop computer, this section will discuss the steps to follow to delete your direct messages.

However, keep in mind that Discord does not allow you to delete direct messages. If you don’t want to show messages from a particular friend, you can remove the chat copy, and it will disappear from the messages temporarily, although it will still be visible in the recipient’s chats. And if the friend contacts you again, the messages will show.

You can delete the local copy of messages by following the steps below:

1. Open the Discord program on your computer and go to the chat panel of the person whom you direct messaged;
2. Tap on the ‘Message’ option on the left side, and then select the ‘Direct Message’ option on the top left side;
3. Select the message that you want to delete and click the 3 dots to click on Delete Message, then the message you sent will be deleted at your end.

The procedure for deleting DMs from your Discord smartphone application applies for both the Android and IOS application, and it is as follows:

1. Open the Discord app on your smartphone
2. Find the message that you want to delete
3. Tap and hold the message. You will be presented with a list
4. Tap ‘Delete’ on that list
5. Confirm your decision by tapping ‘Delete’ once again
6. The message will be deleted

Part 3: How to Delete Channel Messages in Discord?

This method has to be the most effective and easy way to delete a Discord message, and it’s a simple, straightforward procedure:

1. Go to the message and glide over it to reveal the three-tier settings icon
2. Click on it to show options, and then select Delete Message

To do this individually, you will need to use the mouse consistently, eating up a lot of time. If you wish to do it by keyboard, you can do so, provided you know the sequence for the keyboard commands for deletion.

Here is a more detailed breakdown of the sequence:

1. Select the Chat panel that you want to delete
2. Hover your cursor over the messages you wish to delete
3. A three-dot icon will appear on the right side of the message
4. Click on the icon, and a pop-menu will show
5. On the pop-up menu, select ‘Delete’
6. You will be prompted with a confirmation for deleting the message
7. Tick the confirmation and tap the ‘Delete’ button
8. Your message will be deleted

At first glance, it seems like a long and tedious process, but once you get down to doing it and develop a rhythm, it is an easy task.

Part 4: Deleting Message with Discord Clear Chat Bot

Please keep in mind that Discord has changed its policy regarding bots, going from discouraging their use to outright flagging them as a violation of its terms.

Using bots can put you at risk of termination from the app, so we would not advise you to adopt this method, and if you do, please tread with caution.

With that said, many users report that using self-bots does not significantly lead to any disciplinary action from Discord, given that the reason for use is not harmful or disruptive.

Discord requires that all bots are tracked through its ‘Develop Portal.’ Self-bots run on a Discord API token and can circumvent this rule, allowing them access to API requests hence automating many tasks, such as deleting messages.

The Discord API supports a POST request, letting bots swiftly discard messages less than fourteen days old. Messages that are older than this timeframe can be queued and discarded one-by-one.

One particular bot that is of interest to us is the MEE6. It is used to control moderation, set-up leveling, manage music, and much more, including mass-deleting messages on Discord.

We’ve outlined a few commands you can use to delete your chats. These are as follows:

1. Go to the official MEE6 website and click on the button that says Add to Discord

1. You’ll be prompted to authorize so that MEE6 bot can access your username, and know what server you’re in.
2. Pin-point the server you want to add the bot and then set up to connect MEE6 to the Discord server.

1. Click Authorize again and the bot will be added to your Discord server soon;
2. To enable MEE6 to clear the chat, you should enable the Moderator plugin first. Click the Moderator option under Plugins first, and then click Yes.

1. Now go to the server in your Discord and type in “!clear @username” to remove every message sent by the user you’ve mentioned.

To clear the last 100 messages on your server, type in “!clear 100”. You can replace 100 with any number of your choice. However, MEE6 can’t delete messages past 2 weeks.

Part 5: How to Clear All Chats and Delete All Messages In Discord?

In the section above, we talked about deleting messages without using the mouse. That leads us to the possibility of utilizing the ‘AutoHotkey’ script to automate the process.

Most developers have come up with codes that can delete Discord messages from your account on a mass scale. We’ll be expanding on one of the most popular instances of this: the AutoHotkey script.

Before you get started with this, you will need an ‘AutoHotkey installer.’ Continue the process by:

1. Download and install the ‘AutoHotkey installer’ ;
2. Head onto your desktop, right-click and click ‘New’ on the drop-down menu;
3. Choose the ‘AutoHotkey script’ and right-click on this file and edit with ‘Notepad’
4. Delete everything in the script and paste the following code

t::

Loop, 100000

{

send, {Up}

send, ^a

send, {BS}

send, {Enter}

send, {Enter}

sleep, 100

}

Return

1. Save the file as any name that you wish to
2. Once you’ve done that, launch Discord and double-click on the script file
3. Open the chat data that you wish to delete and press T
4. The script will now delete all the messages

To stop the script, click on the H icon located on the right side of your taskbar and select Pause Script.

This is the process by which you can use an ‘Autohotkey script’ to delete messages in bulk. Please note that this option is only available to Windows users as AutoHotkey does not currently work on macOS.

Ideally, you’ll want the following things from your AutoHotkey script:

1. A toggle key for turning it on and off
2. The complete keyboard sequence with stops between each step

Disclaimer: you can delete a message you sent, but there’s no saying if the other person took a screenshot before you got around to deleting it. Things on the internet tend to stick around. So, as a safe bet, it’s a good idea to take some time to consider what you wrote before pressing send to avoid any regrets.

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FAQs About Deleting Discord Messages

1. Can I Recover A Deleted Message on Discord?

Unfortunately, once a message is deleted, there is no way for Discord users to reaccess it.

2. Can I View Deleted Messages?

Unfortunately, there is no way to see deleted messages. Channel and server admins can see if a message was deleted, but they cannot see the deleted message’s contents.

3. How Can I Delete Other People’s Messages?

If you are an admin or an owner of a server, you can delete other people’s messages by following one of the methods mentioned above.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

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