Group Messaging suddenly all mest up on iOS

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Level 1

26 points

Group Messaging suddenly all mest up on iOS

I have an iPhone 6s plus and an iPad, and group messaging is suddenly all messed up - often with tragic results. If I send a message out to a group, responses I get appear to come from individuals (instead of the group). I can't tell if I'm responding to an individual, or to the group. This is super frustrating, particularly when you discuss confidential information, and can't tell if its being seen by the group, or the individual who appeared to respond.

To be clear: I send a message to a group, then receive a response that appears to come from 1 individual in the group.

I keep iMessage turned on, because I have a web-only iPad that I principally use for Messaging and Facetime (for accessibility reasons) which I keep linked to my iPhone. I found a "Group Messaging" slider in settings - I tried turning that off and it did not solve the problem. I read recommendations online that said I needed to turn off iMessaging to fix this glitch, but this takes away the option to use my iPad in conjunction with my iPhone.

Also, when people receive my group messages to the team, person A will respond telling me I left person B off the list. Then person B will respond telling me I left person C off the list.

Group messaging worked perfectly for me for the last 10 years, and as of Christmas 2019 its all messed up. Its created a lot of miscommunication on my team, and resulted in people saying things in confidence that get shared with unintended recipients.

What's the deal? Does anyone have this problem all of a sudden?

iPhone 6s Plus

Posted on Jan 5, 2020 9:57 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

gigasaurus Author

Level 1

26 points

Jan 7, 2020 5:39 PM in response to CarlAVII

Thanks for replying. All my messages have Green bubbles, so it must be "group MMS". These groups have existed on my phone for years and always worked as expected. There was an iOS update around Christmas, and suddenly I started receiving individual responses as separate messages, and various people complained that messages they received from me had certain team members left out of the group message. Just the other night I saw an update to iOS 13.3 was available. I completed that update and everything went back to normal. So the problem must have been in one of the iOS 13.2.x updates for iPhone 6s plus.

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Answer 2

CarlAVII

Community Specialist

Jan 7, 2020 5:08 PM in response to gigasaurus

Hello gigasaurus,

Thanks for reaching out to us about this group messaging issue. I can understand wanting to make sure all your group message and their replies come in as expected. I will do all I can to help. First, I'd like to clarify how group messages work. All responses in a Group SMS are sent as individual text messages and the recipients can’t see the other responses from the group. That being said, are all the recipients using an Apple device with iMessage enabled? Or are some of these being sent as regular text messages?

Also, check out this information about group messaging: Send a group message on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

Some other settings you may want to review, will help ensure your Messages are sent and received the same across all your devices. Check out this page as well: Use Continuity to connect your Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple Watch

Please don't hesitate to let me know if you have any questions about the information on these pages.

Best regards!

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Answer 3

genieen16

Community Specialist

Jan 8, 2020 2:21 PM in response to gigasaurus

Hello gigasaurus,

Thanks for getting back to us and letting us know. I'm so glad to see that updating the iOS software got that working as expected. Please do not hesitate to reach out if you have any other questions or concerns. I appreciate you and your time, and hope you have a great rest of your day!

Cheers!

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Group Messaging suddenly all mest up on iOS

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