iPhone text messages disappeared

Same problem! One contact that I can see—my daughter!!!—I’ve lost the entire message thread. I just allowed the automatic iOS update. VERY frustrating. And it seems to be happening to many iPhone users.

I have an iPhone 11.

Apple, please address this!!

Under settings, I went to iCloud. There is a section that says Apps using iCloud. Messages was turned off for some reason. As soon as I turned it on the missing messages started downloading back to my phone. Hope that helps someone cause I’ve spent the last 2 hours trying all the other suggestions and nothing else worked for me :-)

APPLE ENGINEERS ARE YOU LISTENING? Every morning I awake to discovery new messages posted by Apple users experiencing lost messages. Understandingly, it is difficult to truly comprehend the value of the lost information when it is not your own, but Apple has an obligation and responsibility to each of its customers to diligently investigate the complaints and determine a workable solution. The duty extends from the Trust placed by customers and for reasons Apple insists their OS requires no additional security or protection of personal data. Apple is also charged with a heightened responsibility for protection of business data for what must include acknowledgement for the intended use by a diverse customer base and in the absence of a disclosure of limitations. Beyond these legal expectations, Apple has continued to benefit from its leader position and success driven by its customer base. Apple has the resources and reasons to support a genuine interest and dedicated efforts to resolve the current complaints describing serious losses of data. I have been working with a high level senior advisor to whom I have provided substantial information and results that strongly support this problem is directly related to several OS updates, indicating a failure to protect and or preserve information. Apple representatives have grossly dismissed the problem and denied the problem that Apple management has continued to engage in misleading statements concerning a secret icloud directory, separate from iCloud backups, that messages are stored and protected in, however, cannot produce on demand. I have now experienced the loss of 5.7 GB of messages, most of which are needed for legal actions for a case I filed for elder and financial abuse against my parent and untimely death. The data was material evidence and cannot be replaced or found anywhere else. My children and I filed these legal actions because it was the right thing to do and we were grossly exploited by our own attorney and must fight again. I am not complaining because the missing messages concern social events, rather the missing data has serious and potentially irreparable harm if not produced.

Thanks for the basics reminder, but this is an unexpected problem not related to our normal settings. It seems to be happening to many iPhone users, particularly after this last iOS update.

Apple, will you please address this anomaly?? My daughter’s entire message thread has simply disappeared and I want it back!!!

(iphone 11 with “keep messages forever” selected)

iPhone 12 Pro 512GB with 450GB free…

Looks like I have the same issue as all of you guys. Some points I was able to establish:

1. Happens to both text messages (green) and iMessages (blue).
2. Sometimes I am able to read the message only through notification, if I tap the notification it’s not there (just showing old messages with this contact). Sometimes it is there but after some time it disappears and sometimes it comes back, sometimes not. There is no rule for that.
3. It often happens that the both list of threads and messages inside the threads are randomly shuffled, sometimes they come back to order.
4. The iPhone is running the newest iOS (15.2).
5. Tried to hard reset - no change.
6. iCloud sync for messages is turned off
7. Messages are set to be kept “forever”.
8. (added) It has been happening from the very beginning, it’s not that it just randomly started to happen at some point of time (eg after software update etc).

Have you guys moved from Android? In my case I did it using the official move to iOS app and I am wondering if that is causing the isssue.

I actually need have a lot of messages archived because of work I do, and it’s ridiculous I have to screen shot every single message to be sure it won’t disappear when I need it. Apple seems to not see an issue while the phone they provide is kinda useless.

Hope eventually there will be a fix for that.

Regards

Nope. Turning off messages in iCloud does not work. I lost a total of 12GB of data. It does seem SOME of the list threads are still resident on my iPad, which synched at some point but has had Messages in Cloud turned off for awhile.

Clearly, interacting with the iCloud is highly risky for users. It’s beyond rude and Orwellian for Apple not to WARN us to take precautions given this KNOWN program failure.

I have also been experiencing the same issue starting on Feb 19, 2021. I have a Xs Max with 417 GB of available storage capacity. My messages are set to sync to icloud and are set to be kept forever. Currently storage management shows I have 13.7 GB in messages in icloud. I started to experience imessage or text threads "disappearing" for only a few select contacts. The currently provided recommended response is totally inadequate. I have my old 6s, reset it to factory setting, then reactivated imessage through signing into my apple id account, not restoring from a back, but an attempt to re-sync all imessages stored in icloud. This worked for two out of the three contacts and the message threads seemed to be restored, however today one of those threads again "disappeared" from the message app. The issue does not seem to be one of lack of storage space or connectivity. Very frustrating not to be able to refresh and restore all texts for several contacts out of several other dozens that are fine. Understand that messages are not included in the individual backup files but are sync'd separately, same as photos.

Need advice on direction to correct this malfunction.

If you're asking about why some messages disappear after being in your inbox for quite some time, this may be due to your Message History being automatically deleted. To check if your messages are automatically deleted, go to Settings > Scroll down to Messages > Scroll down to Message History. If "Forever" is not selected, this is the reason why some of your messages disappear.

To make sure your messages are being safely backed up to iCloud, go to Settings > Click your profile > iCloud > Scroll down to Messages and enable it. Note that you may need to setup Two-Factor Authentication to enable this feature.

Learn more about backing up your messages to iCloud here:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208532

Hi, as i mentioned above...over the weekend I attempted to restore by my backup that ran the day before the loss. I did not get everything back. I am very frustrated. It appears i go back most of my messages from my one daughter as i scrolled back the history for some time, however no attachments, photos, videos she has sent me in her text were there. All gone.

Many photos/ small videos of grandchildren over last 2yrs. She lives across country, i will have to try to get them all back when visit. Also i have 3 daughters, we keep a running text, or did. Those did not reload. They are all gone and should have been in the backup. of course this is just spot checking as much as i can see, who knows what else is lost.

Apple.....What is going on????? any solutions.?

Iphone 7+ "keep for ever" . did all the tricks, turning things on off, etc.

This just happened to me last night…out of nowhere. Picked up my phone and four of my messages threads were just gone. I have plenty of storage both within the cloud and my iPhone X in general. Messages are set to be kept forever too. I did a reset and the backup I had didn’t bring back the message threads from these four people. I talked to an advisor who sent my case to some engineers. I signed in and out of the iCloud, iMessage and FaceTime. I then would get a message saying that “messages in iCloud not available as iCloud and iMessage accounts do not match”. I have restarted my phone numerous times too. Clearly an error on iClouds end. Disappointing.

I am experiencing the same problem. It’s been going on since early January. At one point I did an OS update and messages reappeared. Since then they disappeared again. I did another OS update and they did not reappear. Apple will you be addressing this?

I am experiencing the same problem. I have plenty of storage, did all the suggested tricks on turning things off and on, hard restart, etc. i have a back up from yesterday. It appears that not all message history is being deleted just certain contacts.

I will try to restore from the back up. nervous to do that for these messages, but they are important to me. but is a small % of the entire data on my phone. hoping i do not loose things in the back up and the back up works, as i have not had to do that before.

I have exactly the same issue - about 5 of my main contacts have lost all history. Have spent hours on this with Optus and Apple but no one can help. Have tried all fixes mentioned. Now, today my email signatures have all disappeared from Mac Mail... I wonder if this is an iCloud issue - but HOW DO YOU GET ANYONE TO HELP????

This totally sucks. I'm having the same issue, and your situation is not giving me much hope. I use texts pretty much like Slack and I really can't afford to lose reams of text chains for no apparent reason.