Mac Messages app showing phone numbers not names

Hi John,

I had a similar problem and found somewhat of a solution. If you haven't already resolved your issue, give this a try:

On Macbook: contacts → settings → accounts → with iMessage open, toggle "enable this account" for each active account (watch your messages app to see if contact names reappear).

In my case, disabling my google account made my contact names and photos reappear. I noticed for all the contacts that were unknown when my google account was enabled, each contact card included the person's email. Having their email in their iMessage contact was unnecessary for my use, so I simply removed their emails from their contact, reenabled my google account, and the issue was still resolved.

My apologies if this is not useful for your purposes; good luck!

I've had the same problem crop up at random intervals. Adding the country code (+1 for the US, +44 for UK, etc.) supposedly helps, but I think the act of editing the phone number in the Contacts data is all that's really required - no actual change to the number is needed. I can just click "Edit" in Contacts, click within the number, as if intending to modify it, then click "Done". The contact's name shows up immediately in Messages.

I had the same problem. I had some names that would show on Mac and others that just show as numbers. I tried the recommendations on this chain but without success. Then I checked my iPhone, and turns out It was because I did not have all my contacts synced to iCloud on my iPhone. I must have turned it off at some point. I did the following on my iPhone which synced them right away on my Mac:

Go to Settings and then iCloud.

Under Apps using iCloud select Contacts, or Show All, if contacts is not one of the top ones that is displayed for you.

Once you see Contacts, make sure they are toggled to on (i.e., green).

That should do the trick.

Hello John,

Thanks for that info and for choosing the Apple Support Communities. If we understand correctly, you are unable to see contact names in the Messages app on your Mac, as it only shows a phone number. You mentioned that you don't use iCloud for syncing contacts, so let's make sure whatever account you use for contacts is added to your Mac:

"Add a new account

1. In the Contacts app  on your Mac, choose Contacts > Add Account.

2. Select an account type or, if you don’t see your account type, select Other Contacts Account, then click Continue.

3.

4. Enter your account information.

5. Make sure the Contacts checkbox is selected for the account.

Add an account you already use on your Mac

1. In the Contacts app  on your Mac, choose Contacts > Accounts to open Internet Accounts settings.

2. Select the account you want to use on the left, then select the Contacts checkbox on the right.

Choose your default contacts account

If you use more than one account in Contacts, new contacts are added to the default account. You can choose the default account.

1. In the Contacts app  on your Mac, choose Contacts > Settings, then click General.

2. Click the Default Account pop-up menu (shown only if you use more than one account), then choose an account."

And that info is from here: Add contacts from iCloud, Google, and more to Contacts on Mac - Apple Support

Next, use safe mode to start up your Mac as it does the following things:

• Verifies your startup disk and attempts to repair directory issues, if needed
• Loads only required kernel extensions
• Prevents Startup Items and Login Items from opening automatically
• Disables user-installed fonts
• Deletes font caches, kernel cache, and other system cache files

Log in to your user account and test the issue while in safe mode and then restart normally and test the issue again.

Use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support

If you are still having this issue, please contact Apple directly to investigate further: Apple Support

Cheers!

Thanks for the tip, John. Odly enough, I had my google account disabled while this problem showed up for me. I enabled the google account, and that suddenly fixed it. I then disabled the account again, and everything remained correct. Apparently, just some change needs to be made to wake it up. I need to jot this down for next time!

I followed this tip of editing the contact. I had to click in the phone number and do something, anything to the phone number, and then the person's name would appear right after doing so as I was looking at it in iMessage. This needs to be fixed on Apple's end because I am not going to do this for every contact!

I solved the same issue. After reading some replies above, it did occur to me that on my iPhone, I sync all of my contact info from Google. I have used Google as my back up long before iCloud. Therefore on my mac mini or macbook, Open contacts -> Add account - > add google account. As soon as i did this, all of the names /pics/contact info synced on all of my iMessage's and will now be in your Contact app as well. Good Luck!

Yes, something close to this worked for me too on the MacBook! Once all accounts (including email/gmail) are synced and enabled, most contacts were still only showing phone numbers on the MacBook. So I right-clicked one of the phone numbers in the 'To' section and clicked 'Add to Contacts'. Then I typed in the exact same contact info for the person's name that was in my phone and clicked 'Create'. This conflict (person already exists in the directory) prompted some sort of directory refresh and ALL of the phone numbers on the MacBook got updated to people's names! :D

That tip was very helpful. I found CONTACTS in the iCloud tab of settings. Clicked box next to CONTACTS and in a few seconds all of the numbers in my text history turned to their contact names before my eyes. Thanks for the help Ipack1234!

@jpdemers, this is what I've found as well. Something just needs to sort of "wake it up" and have it refresh the contacts. Of course Apple should be doing this in the background automatically, but apparently something is off.

I've had *some* success in adding a country code. But sometimes the code is already there. If I remove the code, it never seems to help. But going into Message settings and accounts, and checking and unchecking various accounts seems to have been the ONE way I can consistently get everything back in order after it goes wonky.

If contacts are not synced through iCloud, in internet accounts, is contacts on for the account your contacts are connected through? If yes, toggle contacts on/off to see if that brings the names back. Also make sure it’s not asking you for a password for third party accounts. Sometimes a third party account needs you to verify by adding the password when you update.

Hi All. I had similar problem. This forum was helpful. But, I found that the cause of my problem was different. I use Microsoft 365 (Outlook) as primary place to manage Contacts. I had set up my iPhone to sync with Microsoft (thus contact names appeared in Messages on my iPhone). Some contact names were not, however, appearing in Messages on my Mac. I then found that I had to go into the Contacts app on the Mac itself and add my Microsoft account to Contacts app on the Mac. Once I did this, all my Contacts showed up in Mac Contacts and then they also showed up in Mac Messages.