Deleting Channels

You can either delete or truncate a channel to remove its contents. For truncation go over to Truncate Channel page.

Deleting a Channel

You can delete a single Channel using the delete method. This marks the channel as deleted and hides all the messages.

val channelClient = client.channel("messaging", "general")

channelClient.delete().enqueue { result ->
  if (result.isSuccess) {
    val channel = result.data()
  } else {
    // Handle result.error()
  }
}

const destroy = await channel.delete();

$channel->delete();

await channel.delete();

import Stream Chat

let controller = chatClient.channelController(for: .init(type: .messaging, id: "general"))

controller.deleteChannel { error in
  if let error = error {
    // handle error
    print(error)
  }
}

Channel->Delete();

channel.delete()

channel.delete()

channel.delete(ctx);

await channelClient.DeleteAsync("<channel-type>", "<channel-id>");

// Soft delete channel
await channel.DeleteAsync();

// Backend SDK
Channel.delete(
    channel.getType(),
    channel.getId())
  .request();

Deleting Many Channels

You can delete up to 100 channels and optionally all of their messages using this method. This can be a large amount of data to delete, so this endpoint processes asynchronously, meaning responses contain a task ID which can be polled using the getTask endpoint to check status of the deletions. Channels will be soft-deleted immediately so that channels no longer return from queries, but permanently deleting the channel and deleting messages takes longer to process.

By default, messages are soft deleted, which means they are removed from client but are still available via server-side export functions. You can also hard delete messages, which deletes them from everywhere, by setting "hard_delete": true in the request. Messages that have been soft or hard deleted cannot be recovered.

This is currently supported on the following SDK versions (or higher):

• Javascript 4.3.0, Python 3.14.0, Ruby 2.12.0, PHP 2.6.0, Go 3.13.0, Java 1.4.0, Unity 2.0.0 and.NET 0.22.0

// client-side soft delete
const response = await client.deleteChannels([cid1, cid2]);
// client-side hard delete
const response = await client.deleteChannels([cid1, cid2], {hard_delete: true});
const result = response.result // holds deletion result

// server-side soft delete
const response = await serverClient.deleteChannels([cid1, cid2]);
// server-side hard delete
const response = await serverClient.deleteChannels([cid1, cid2], {hard_delete: true});

const result = await serverClient.getTask(response.task_id);
if(result['status'] === 'completed') {
  // success!
}

// soft deletion
taskID, _ := client.DeleteChannels([]string{cid1, cid2}, false)
// hard deletion
taskID, _ := client.DeleteChannels([]string{cid1, cid2}, true)

response, err := client.GetTask(taskID)
if err != nil {
  return err
}

if response.Status == "completed" {
  // success!
}

# soft deletion
response = client.delete_channels([cid1, cid2])
# hard deletion
response = client.delete_channels([cid1, cid2], hard_delete=True)

response = client.get_task(response["task_id"])
if response['status'] == 'completed':
  # success!
  pass

# soft deletion
response = client.delete_channels([cid1, cid2], hard_delete: false)
# hard deletion
response = client.delete_channels([cid1, cid2], hard_delete: true)

response = client.get_task(response["task_id"])
if response['status'] == 'completed'
  # success!

// soft deletion
$response = $client->deleteChannels([cid1, cid2], ["hard_delete" => false]);
// hard deletion
$response = $client->deleteChannels([cid1, cid2], ["hard_delete" => true]);

$response = $client->getTask($response["task_id"]);
if ($response["status"] == "completed") {
  // success!
};

// soft deletion
var taskId = Channel.deleteMany(List.of(cid1, cid1), DeleteStrategy.SOFT).request().getTaskId();
// hard deletion
var taskId = Channel.deleteMany(List.of(cid1, cid1), DeleteStrategy.HARD).request().getTaskId();

var taskStatusResponse = TaskStatus.get(taskId).request();
// "completed".equals(taskStatusResponse.status);

// soft deletion
var resp = await channelClient.DeleteChannelsAsync(new[] { cid }, hardDelete: false);

// hard deletion
var resp = await channelClient.DeleteChannelsAsync(new[] { cid }, hardDelete: true);

var response = await taskClient.GetTaskStatusAsync(resp.TaskId);
// response.Status == AsyncTaskStatus.Completed;

// Hard delete removes the channel entirely from the database while soft delete removes the from users to see but it's still accessible via server-side SDK as an archive
await Client.DeleteMultipleChannelsAsync(new[] { channel, channel2 }, isHardDelete: true);

// Android SDK
ChannelClient channelClient = client.channel("messaging", "general");

channelClient.delete().enqueue(result -> {
  if (result.isSuccess()) {
    Channel channel = result.data();
  } else {
    // Handle result.error()
  }
});

// Backend SDK
Channel.deleteMany(List.of("c:1", "c:2"), DeleteStrategy.HARD).request();

The deleteChannels response contain a taskID which can be polled using the getTask endpoint to check the status of the deletions.