---
summary: Allow the deletion of room event history
---
created: 2016-01-18 14:40:00.0
creator: erikseres
description: |-
  Would it be possible/not against the general conceptual design of Matrix to implement an API or provide a maintenance feature that allows to delete room history that is older than a given timestamp or is in excess of N events?

  We are working on a project that needs to keep the most recent N messages that are not older than T timestamp and flush the rest. Either keeping N most recent events or keeping events that are more recent than T timestamp, regardless of count, would work for our needs.

  If there is no plan to add this feature or it is contradictory to the design, is there a workaround to this?
id: '12317'
key: SYN-601
number: '601'
priority: '3'
project: '10000'
reporter: erikseres
status: '10100'
type: '2'
updated: 2016-11-07 18:28:59.0
votes: '0'
watches: '3'
workflowId: '12422'
---
actions:
- author: matthew
  body: We absolutely need to provide a way to expire data older than a timestamp or N events.  SPEC-141 (and linked bugs) is where this is being tracked - we just haven't got to it yet :)
  created: 2016-01-18 20:04:43.0
  id: '12575'
  issue: '12317'
  type: comment
  updateauthor: matthew
  updated: 2016-01-18 20:04:43.0
- author: richvdh
  body: Don't we have this, via the admin API?
  created: 2016-10-26 13:17:06.0
  id: '13221'
  issue: '12317'
  type: comment
  updateauthor: richvdh
  updated: 2016-10-26 13:17:06.0
- author: richvdh
  body: 'Also: dup of SYN-361?'
  created: 2016-10-26 13:19:12.0
  id: '13223'
  issue: '12317'
  type: comment
  updateauthor: richvdh
  updated: 2016-10-26 13:19:12.0
- author: richvdh
  body: 'Migrated to github: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/issues/1480'
  created: 2016-11-07 18:28:59.0
  id: '13785'
  issue: '12317'
  type: comment
  updateauthor: richvdh
  updated: 2016-11-07 18:28:59.0