Messages not staying pinned in iOS 14 on iPhone

In theory nine groups can be pinned at once, but many people have found that nine groups do not all remain pinned. In iOs 14.1 if I deleted one message thread (from anyone, pinned or not) the missing pinned groups would reappear. In 14.2 that is no longer the case--they disappear and must be re-added manually, only to disappear again. The disappearing issue seems to apply to groups larger than 2 people, with a mix of Android and Apple users. A group of two made of an Android and an Apple user appears to be stable, as do individual Android users, as do groups of 2 Apple users. I don't have any larger groups of all Apple users so I can't speak to that. And reading above, there is no consistency about which pinned groups get dropped.

It is frustrating--Apple introduced a great feature, but it doesn't really work...

I've had three Messages pinned since we first could pin, two are individuals, one is a family group of 5. Twice they have disappeared on me, all three pins there this morning, gone by afternoon. Force quit app and restarting phone doesn't bring them back, have to add manually. This first occurred for me on 14.3 and this second time it happened I'm on 14.4 which is the current version, so 14.0.1 didn't fix the issue.

Is everyone in the group message that comes unpinned using iMessage?

Same thing. The thread which is still listed as “pinned” even though it isn’t, will re-pin itself if I delete another message. And for me it does seem to be the group pins that are mixed Android/IPhone users. Hopefully the next update will include a fix for this bug because I really love having my most commonly used texts pinned to the top.

Maybe it has something to do with iPhones and Androids. I have the same problem but it seems like I only have that problem because the other user is an Android user. Apple needs to fix that not everyone has an iPhone.

The problem seemed fixed for me with 14.3. Updated to the 14.4 RC today and it’s back now - group chats unpinning, splitting into two etc. I don’t think they even understand what’s causing this. 12 Pro Max on Verizon.

I'd submit feedback to Apple. The more people who report a specific problem, the more likely they are to pay attention to it.

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Really, at this point all the Apple support people should just be telling consumers that this is a known bug, rather than wasting our time and theirs with suggesting useless fixes.

Wow, it did work! I deleted a message I had no interest in saving and my missing pinned conversation reappeared!

Yup--any unit of more than one person, where one is an Android user, tends to come unpinned.

I'm having similar problems. Pinned text conversations disappear, but when I send a new text to the recipient, it reappears, but not as pinned. I've had new group text revert to old named groups, with lots of history texts missing. It all feels rather random.

At least I've been able to restore old text history by sending new text to missing recipient.

I am having the same problem. All my pinned conversations stay on my iPad Pro but not on my iPhone 11 Pro. There is one conversation that constantly gets unpinned. It is a group chat with 6 other people and there is one android user in that group chat. I have another group chat pinned with 2 other iPhone users and that one stays pinned. So I’m not sure if it is the android user or the number of people in the group chat.

And often times when I edit pins and go back in and add that group chat to the pins it will show up on top but as soon as I hit done, it disappears again.

That still happens to me, even with iOs 14.0.1, and furthermore when I try to re-pin the missing contact of contact group it says it is already pinned--that is, I only have the option to unpin it. But actually I don't have that option either: clicking on unpin does nothing! And restarting my iPhone does not fix this.

I discovered that I could re-pin them if I use the "edit pins" function as opposed to a long press on the group. However, they continually disappear again. Sometimes I come back to only eight of the nine still pinned, and this morning I came back to only six of the nine still pinned.

Calisson wrote:

Does anyone know if anyone from Apple reads these pages? Or are we just commiserating with each other?

The only Apple employees who regularly read these pages are the Hosts. They read to make sure that everything conforms to the Terms of Use. They don't have time to do anything else. There are also the Community Specialists who answer questions that have gone unanswered for more that 12 hours and which can be answered primarily by a referral to a support article.

If you want help from Apple, use the Contact Support link at the top right of every page of these forums.

If you want to leave feedback for Apple, use this page:

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