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 is Result.Success) {  val channel = result.value  } else {  // Handle Result.Failure  } }

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();

# require 'stream-chat'  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.