Mac Messages app showing phone numbers not names

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.

@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.

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.

One of my Macs is on Monterey, the only one I use for email through Google=gmail. I get Messages on all of my Apple devices.

Like someone else, I found the solution for names not appearing in Messages on this Monterey Mac has something to do with syncing Contacts through BOTH iCloud and Google. In Contacts->Accounts (which takes me to System Preferences->Internet Accounts) I clicked on Google, and UN-checked Contacts, Calendars, and Notes, leaving Mail checked. When I did that, Messages (which was open) immediately showed names instead of phone numbers. I closed Messages, reopened, and names were still showing. I quit all the programs System Settings, Mail, Contacts, and Messages, then reopened Messages -- Success!

I also looked at iCloud settings in Internet Accounts. Conspicuously UN-checked is Mail. Contacts is CHECKED in iCloud.

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 couldn't solve this on my own by just looking at these things, but what worked for me (and may work or at least give lots of clarity on your SPECIFIC situation) was calling Apple Customer Service -- wow they are frickin professional! They solved my problem today, while answering another question with an unrelated issue that's been bothering me too! Just do it!

On your mac, go to settings-> tap on your profile-> icloud-> show more apps -> messages in icloud -> on

Also make sure contacts is turned on in both iphone and mac

The previous answer by ipak1234 worked. Disabling Google solved the problem. Thanks.

My contacts were already toggled on but not syncing properly, I just toggled contacts off and back on in iCloud sync and my MacBook contacts populated instantly ! Hope this helps someone !

Hi John,

Thank you for the update. At this point, we suggest you contact Apple Support so that they can look into this with you further.

They can be reached here: Apple Support

Take care.

The more we learn, the more it seems like the system just needs to be kicked every so often. It would sure be great if Apple would make this happen automatically of course. But in the meantime yeah.... we just need to find a way that wakes it up to do a refresh.

This issue STILL persists. I am not about to disable an entire array of other services (Google) to make a notification appear with names, instead of numbers as if they are unknown. Absolutely asinine how this issue has been around since 2019 as this post suggests, and here we are, still unable to see the names of saved contacts in notifications, but on the messages app or in contacts the names appear, totally normal. What has happened to the golden age of Apple?