messages notifications show phone number instead of name

Hi there Mwijtman,

We understand you're experiencing an issue with your Messages notifications showing a phone number and not the contact name, and we'd like to see if we can assist.

First, check to make sure your contacts are syncing as expected with your Mac: Set up and use iCloud Contacts

If the issue persists, try restarting your Mac: Log out, sleep, wake, restart, or shut down your Mac

We hope this helps.

I don’t suppose a permanent solution has been discovered for this beyond just restarting your Mac once it crops up again?

This consistently still happens under Big Sur on my iMac. Yes, every setting is as it should be and always has been, and yes, restarting fixes it for a while—but it eventually happens again. All iOS devices are set up as they should be and are all on the latest public releases (no betas). I’ve even nuked the Contacts database pulled down from iCloud altogether to default state, but still ... it begins happening again and I can’t figure out what’s triggering it. 🤔

This was also an issue that cropped up towards the end of Catalina, so I feel like it might’ve been introduced there. If I figure out how to reproduce it, I’ll post it! 😔

Mwijtman,

We're glad to hear the issue has been resolved after restarting your Mac!

Feel free to post again if you have any questions in the future.

Take care!