I've had this issue for months, and have been searching for a solution every couple of weeks when I get frustrated. I found this on Reddit, and it actually worked:
So, assuming message syncing was previously working across both devices (and now that it's not working you've gone ahead and reconfirmed that both devices are still setup that way), what worked for me was:
- On iPhone, go to: Settings -> iCloud (top section that displays your name) -> iCloud -> Under 'Apps using iCloud' press 'Show All' -> Messages in iCloud -> (assuming this is on) press 'Sync Now' -> Wait for it to sync.
- On Macbook, go to: Messages App -> Settings (Top Menu Bar within the Messages App press 'Messages' and then 'Settings' from the drop down list) -> iMessage (When the iMessage settings pop up appears, select the 'iMessage' header - for reference I see three, which are 'General', 'imessage' and 'Shared with You') -> Press 'Sync Now'.
This worked for me. It seems like even though imessage on my iphone was appearing as if it were syncing correctly, it didn't actually sync and pull through those messages until I completed action 1 above. Then after doing this and following action 2, it allowed the messages to be pulled through to my Macbook.
Note, I've heard other people having to continually manually pull through messages using the above method fairly regularly, indicating that this may be a persistent issue until a new iOS/OS update comes. Hopefully it will be fixed soon or hopefully I am able to grow a brain and workout what setting I've enabled that causes this issue (my hubris blames others for its mistakes).
Minor caveat:
- While newer messages have synced, for whatever reason newly synced messages that are unread on my phone appear as read on my Macbook. Potentially unrelated, but just wanted to let people know.
Reference - iOS/OS version:
- IOS: 17.4.1
- Mac OS: 14.4.1
dmccann14 wrote:
Why are my messages not syncing between iPhone and MacBook?
