Apple Watch not marking SMS text as read

I had no issues like this until the day I activated my new phone (12 Pro Max). No issues with iMessages, but if I read a non-iMessage SMS on my iPhone, it would still show unread on my Watch and iPad. I followed the steps listed in this thread and others, and the suggestions of some YouTube videos. I contacted Apple and after nearly three hours with an agent, it was escalated to engineering. Their last reply was that they were aware of the issue and hoped it would be resolved in an upcoming iOS 14.xx release.

After looking more into potential fixes, I decided to try this and it worked.

• On your iPhone: Go to Settings --> Messages --> Send & Receive.
• Under You Can Receive iMessages To and Reply From, deselect your phone number. You will be asked to confirm you want to remove the number from iMessage and FaceTime. Click Remove. I did not lose any messages or experience any other irregularities on any of my devices when I did this.
• After a few seconds, add the phone number back.

After doing this, any non-iMessage that came in to my iPhone that I read would correctly show as read on my Watch and iPad. It will not mark read any messages received before this, but moving forward after following those steps, it synced correctly.

Hopefully this is a possible fix for those who have exhausted all other options.

• This worked for me!
• Thanks Mikey407!
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• On your iPhone: Go to Settings --> Messages --> Send & Receive.
• Under You Can Receive iMessages To and Reply From, deselect your phone number. You will be asked to confirm you want to remove the number from iMessage and FaceTime. Click Remove. I did not lose any messages or experience any other irregularities on any of my devices when I did this.
• After a few seconds, add the phone number back.

After doing this, any non-iMessage that came in to my iPhone that I read would correctly show as read on my Watch and iPad. It will not mark read any messages received before this, but moving forward after following those steps, it synced correctly.

Mikey's fix didn't work for me, I ended up disabling iMessage altogether (Settings>Messages>Toggle off "iMessage") then turning it back on and rebooting my watch and after that I haven't had any issues.

I did notice that before I toggled off iMessage it was set to receive on both my phone number and Apple ID, and start new conversations from just my Apple ID. After toggling the setting, it is now set to receive from both, but starts new conversations from my phone number instead of Apple ID. Not sure if that has any relation to the issue at hand, but I will post again if my issue returns!

-Josh

Had the same problem after buying a new watch! It hadn’t occurred to me that the only texts that were left as unread on my watch were from non-Apple phones or automated texts from UPS, FedEx, etc. until I finally found this discussion!

This solution worked for me! Only thing I did differently was turned off my phone, turned off my watch, then turned on my phone then my watch. I hope this sticks because it was driving me CRAZY. Thank you!!

I was having this problem. I did a “reset all settings” on my phone and it is working

I did the reset settings on my iPhone and restarted my phone and watch.

it did work this time.

Thanks

Apple Watch 5, iPhone 12 Pro Max with the same issue.

My fix after powering down watch and phone on again was to simply unpair then repair the watch with phone. That did it for me, just be sure not to opt out of your cellular plan if you have one. I also restored Watch from the same backup that day.

Hope this helps!

I actually had the same problem. My fix was: on the watch app go to Notifications>Messages>mirror my phone. If it’s already set to that, sit it to custom and back to mirror my phone. Then finish it off with restarting the watch. That’s what worked for me and hopefully it works for you guys.

Hi Hairgeek_6,

Sorry to hear it didn't work for you. However, your original post was back on Sept. 18th? I think at this point I'd head to the genius bar and they'll sort it out, one way or another.

Good luck

Just to be sure you know, but you do have to clear out the old message notifications still. Once you do that though, all new ones will clear themselves normally. It might help to restart the watch in that situation, but I’m not sure if that resets the message notifications or not.

When I turn off imessage on my phone, the watch marks the read text messages as read. This is the best fix I've found so far.

Toggling iMessage number finally worked for me. If it doesn’t here is a YouTube vid that walks through some additional options that may work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNbHOL39mt8&noapp=1

I also have been having this issue for weeks, probably since updating to the most recent iOS. (14.1). My Apple Watch is running version 7.1.

Messages will read as unread on my watch, despite all messages being shown as read in my phone. I have checked to make sure it’s not finding unread messages in a filtered view, such as “unknown senders,” but I default my Apple Watch view to “All messages.”

I have done the pairing, unpairing sequence, reset both my phone and watch, etc. which temporarily resolves the issue, but it’s almost like the pairing gets lost and when I read a message on my watch, it won’t recognize as read until I open it on my phone. This tends to happen most frequently when I receive messages from group texts, but it does happen in conversation threads with individuals, as well.

It’s very annoying to always think there’s an unread text on my phone, only to see they’ve all been read and my watch just isn’t keeping up. I hope they’re able to find a fix for this soon!

I am also having this problem. i talked to apple support this evening and they told me that they have not had one report of this problem happening. I advise everyone to contact apple support and get a case number. I find it hard to believe that no one has said anything about this problem. Happen for me after upgrading from 11 pro max to 12 pro max. I have found that it has something to do with your user id and icloud. When i signed out of icloud on my phone and of imessage and signed back in it told me that messenger would not work right because i was signed in with two different user names which i wasnt, and it automatically turned messages off in the cloud, when i toggled the switch back on it connected but was doing the same thing as it was. If I turn imessage off it works fine and clears the messages on my watch, turn back on and it messes up again. I have another call back tomorrow with support so i can explain my new findings.

Yea, this is incorrect; I have called Apple about this directly and was on the phone with them for over an hour trying to work through and sort it all out. I even provided this thread to them over the phone and indicated to them that others were experiencing this and not just me. I have an open case with Dustin, who is one of their Senior Technical Advisors, in case you want to reference that on your call tomorrow, so they can connect them together internally. He was very helpful, but there has been no resolution or seemingly any development on having this fixed as of yet.

Interesting to consider the iMessage connection with the user id and iCloud, though. You'd think people internally at Apple would be experiencing this same thing, as I'm confident many of them have the Apple Watch and iPhones both. Also, I've noticed this tends to happen to me mostly in group messages; I don't get it often in one on one conversations.