I'm bewildered. When sending a text message or SMS in Messages on Catalina, some addressees' names appear on a blue background, some on green, and a few on red. I cannot find any definition of what the software is telling me with those color distinctions. Does anyone know?
iMac 27″, macOS 10.15
Blue is reserved exclusively to Apple's proprietary iMessage service. Others are green for SMS / MMS (which requires Text Message Forwarding).
I believe red means the SMS text message recipient is completely unknown or that the number is ineligible to receive text messages. Most cell service providers will accept a nonsense input only to bounce it back to you saying it's undeliverable, but those will be green. It's possible not all of them can do that, in which case it might be red. I've seen it only rarely.
Blue is reserved exclusively to Apple's proprietary iMessage service. Others are green for SMS / MMS (which requires Text Message Forwarding).
I believe red means the SMS text message recipient is completely unknown or that the number is ineligible to receive text messages. Most cell service providers will accept a nonsense input only to bounce it back to you saying it's undeliverable, but those will be green. It's possible not all of them can do that, in which case it might be red. I've seen it only rarely.
The blue background are messages to other iCloud accounts. The green are to SMS accounts, i.e. Android phones, etc. Have no idea what the red background means as I've never encountered it.
Thanks, OldToad. These are occurring when my wife does Messages. She can jinx even the best software.
Messages / iMessage
