I’m working on a Discord bot using JDA and need to remove all messages from a specific channel. My current approach is unreliable and only works sometimes. Here’s what I’m currently using:
{
List<Message> messageList;
messageList = channel.getHistory().retrievePast(50).complete();
channel.deleteMessages(messageList).queue();
}
I’ve verified that the method is being called correctly and the channel object is valid. However, this code fails intermittently. What’s the proper way to bulk delete all messages from a text channel? Any suggestions for a more reliable solution would be appreciated.
Your intermittent failures are probably from empty message lists or timing issues. When retrievePast returns nothing, deleteMessages crashes. I hit this same bug building my cleanup bot.
Add a null check before trying to delete anything. Discord’s API also gets cranky if you don’t wait between retrieving and deleting - throw in a Thread.sleep(1000) between those calls.
Rate limits are another gotcha. Wrap your delete in proper exception handling so you can see what’s actually breaking. For big channels, don’t assume 50 messages covers it all. Loop until you get zero results back instead.
This is Discord’s 14-day bulk delete limit hitting you. You can’t bulk delete messages older than 14 days - the whole operation just fails or errors out silently. Your code isn’t handling this restriction. I ran into the exact same thing building my mod bot last year. Here’s what fixed it: check message age first, then use a hybrid approach. Messages under 14 days old? Bulk delete in batches of 100 max. Older messages? Delete individually with rate limiting between requests. Also throw some error handling around that complete() call - network timeouts will bite you. And remember retrievePast only grabs 100 messages at a time, so you’ll need multiple passes for bigger channels.
had this same issue last month. the queue() call is async, so your code keeps running before the delete finishes. use complete() instead of queue() for deletes, or add proper callbacks. discord throws weird errors when you hit rate limits, so wrap everything in try-catch blocks.