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Samson Galaxy. Turn off the Recycle Bin in Message Settings; all messages will be deleted. Turn the Recycle Bin on again. Success!
messages delete from my phone but still show up on phonelink.
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Michael Mathison
30
Reputation points
How do I get rid of the messages that show up on phone link but have been deleted from my phone?
Windows for home | Windows 11 | Connect Phone and PC
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Kelly Snyder 10 Reputation points2026-04-24T08:44:43.6033333+00:00 Neither of the responses so far are helpful in the least....
I am having the same problem; there are messages I deleted two weeks ago showing up in my message list on Phone Link. I've tried going to my laptop app settings and clicking repair, deleting the data, uninstalling phone link and reinstalling it, clearing the cache on link to window on my phone, clearing the data on link to windows on my phone, disconnecting my device and reconnecting my device, removing the message access permission and then allowing it again....
I'm out of ideas. Microsoft probably went and rolled out one of their oh-so-reliable updates that always seem to cause something to start malfunctioning 🙄 Looks like Phone Link is this week's casualty. Crossing my fingers they'll fix this bug sooner rather than later....
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MARTIN 0 Reputation points2026-04-25T14:24:06.66+00:00 If you’re using Google Messages, you need to empty the Google Messages trash. Tap your account icon to the right of the search icon, then tap Trash. Deleted messages are automatically removed from the trash after 30 days, and you can’t change that. However, you can delete all messages manually. Once the trash is empty, the messages will be removed from the Windows Phone Link app as well. This worked for me.
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GAIA BEAN 0 Reputation points2026-05-09T17:47:32.8933333+00:00 Deleting messages from Trash did not work for me
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Tom Backscheider 0 Reputation points2026-05-13T17:24:31.1633333+00:00 GAIA BEAN It may be in Archived, Spam & blocked, Or Mark as read.
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Michael Montana 25 Reputation points2026-05-18T19:35:10.0466667+00:00 The only thing that I can do on phone link on my computer is hide messages, but no way to delete them, even if I have deleted them on my phone. Also, some of the text messages that I am getting on my phone are not showing up on my computer. It's like they turned the phone link upside down.
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brian_mk 0 Reputation points2026-08-04T08:56:57.09+00:00 I have the same problem.
I deleted all the messages in the Google Messages trash bin on my phone. That removed the deleted messages from Phone Link as expected.
However, it also removed most of the undeleted messages from Phone Link. The missing undeleted messages remain on the phone.
In my view, the Phone Link messages interface is poorly designed.
Most users expect messages displayed on Phone Link to be automatically synchronised and mirror those on the phone. Instead we end up with a superset or subset with no obvious means of re-synchronising.
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George 0 Reputation points2026-08-14T00:11:13.2266667+00:00 Deleting the spam messages and then emptying the trash worked!
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adelphiaUK 20 Reputation points2026-08-21T18:46:15.8166667+00:00 I know it's a few months since this topic was posted, but I wanted to add that on my PC (via PC Link), I can see messages that are blocked on my phone, which I you definitely should not be able to do.
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Sarah 0 Reputation points2026-10-14T03:20:29.2266667+00:00 What worked for me was going to the spam option under settings on Google messages. When you report a text as spam it goes to that folder. Google seems to be automatically putting some messages which it suspects into the spam folder too. What I did was delete the messages in the spam folder (which sends it to the trash folder then deleted it from the trash (I don't think deleting from the trash is necessary but just to make sure it's all deleted I did this). Then refresh the connection on Phone Link and those messages should be clear from the message notifications.