iPhone call history shared between devices after iOS 17 Update

For most people, that's the way it has worked for years. I don't know why it worked differently for you. What I can tell you is that, every time Apple releases a major update, it has a tendency to break workarounds people used in order to make Apple IDs function differently than Apple intended.

Are you sharing an Apple ID with someone else?

Agreed! For 4+ years I've had two phones, 1 work and 1 personal. I used the same AppleID for one reason and one reason only. It allowed me to leave my work phone at home on the weekend and still get and respond imessages/texts from customers on my personal phone, while at the same time, keeping personal messages off my work phone. The work phone was set up to receive and reply from my work number only, and my personal phone was set up to receive messages from my work phone and my personal phone. It was completely transparent and the customer was none the wiser. Everything else was separate. If I wanted them mixed together I would have enabled "allow calls on nearby devices"! This was the perfect combination of staying reachable and keeping business and pleasure separate.

Yesterday morning I woke up to my personal phone's recent call list completely filled with numbers I didn't recognize, and my voicemail completely full of messages from customers.

So now the real problem, is that I get back to my car following a meeting and there is a missed call on both phones that I don't recognize. Was it a customer calling my work phone, or someone calling my personal phone? What phone do I call back on? I can't clean up the voicemails on either phone because it deletes them from the other phone as well. And yes, it is important that I have two phones.

I spoke to support and the first guy said that's how its always been. Then he put me onto someone else who said that it was a recent change and it was operating as intended. Being able to keep everything separate but still being able to get texts on both phones was the ONLY reason I bought a second iphone rather than an android. This is the ultimate example of a walled garden. How hard would it be to make this an opt in feature?? I can't even think of a scenario where someone would want everything getting mixed together into a single steaming pile, and not already have "allow calls on nearby devices" turned on.

Support explained that all calls are now being routed through icloud which is why it was being combined. So I asked if my health, photo's etc are also being shared between the two phones. She said no, because clearly I had sharing those to the cloud turned off. I explained that I also had phone sync turned off, but that was still being shared, and she said that was because it was going through the cloud. We went around in circles. I'm furious.

It's unfortunate you're furious, but the time it took you to write your post, could have been better served, sending your comments to Apple. You posted to the first post. This is a user to user only forum and only other users are here. Maybe what you wrote makes you feel better? But it doesn't accomplish anything because not one person here has anything to do with Apple, nor have any influence with Apple, nor can anyone here effect any change.

Read through the posts. There is a feedback link posted, which you can use to share your thoughts with Apple directly. In case you don't want to take the time to read the posts, here is the link --> Feedback - iPhone - Apple

You can post whatever you want. But this isn't a rant-complaint forum. This is a technical support forum where you ask a question from other users and other users try to help you with your technical question. It's been asked and it's been answered, that we, as users, cannot turn off this feature.

I wonder if the thread was referring to the main FaceTime on/off switch. Right under the main switch, there's help text saying "People can contact you on all your devices with FaceTime …."

https://www.lifewire.com/prevent-facetime-calls-going-to-all-devices-4103824

Vandybrit wrote:

Why is there so much smoke on here? I came attempting to RE-separate my call logs between my two separate phone lines.

Apple Rep: if you see this, those of us with 2 cell phones on the same Apple ID want our call logs and voicemails to be SEPARATE!

There's NO smoke here. And there is currently NO WAY to separate your call logs if you have multiple phones on the same Apple ID. NO WAY. Apple continues to make it clear that sharing an Apple ID is not the way to go. If you choose to do so, you live with the consequence. If you call that smoke, so be it.

No one from Apple will see your post, nor respond at all here. This is a user to user only forum. Apple does NOT actively participate here. If you want Apple to hear you, the only way to get their attention is to use this feedback link --> Feedback - iPhone - Apple

I’m sure I’m one of the people whose responses have annoyed you. And that’s fine. I’m not sharing an opinion. I’m sharing what Apple’s position is on the sharing of Apple IDs. They don’t recommend it. And each year, they’ve made it just a little bit harder to do so. If you don’t like Apple’s position on that, you are welcome to provide feedback to them with the feedback link provided in this thread.

I to take exception with your comment about Family Sharing. Family Sharing was introduced to help people who do NOT share an Apple ID. It lets them share content, such as apps, photos, iCloud storage, etc. If family members are on the same Apple ID, Family Sharing is pointless and doesn’t need to ever be turned on.

You are more than welcome to be annoyed by people like me telling you sharing an Apple ID is not recommended by Apple. That’s perfectly fine.

While I cannot prove this - except to suggest trying! If 17.0.2 isn't why my phone stopped syncing. The ONLY thing I did yesterday after I restored phone 2 from backup - was once restored, I went to iCloud from my computer and DELETED EVERYTHING that was out there. Contacts from phone 1 - everything that got out there along the way. Then I went to both phones and disabled web access.

I did that before the update - and have all the syncing off on my phones (but that was done long before 17 came along). PERHAPS deleting everything helped. Doesn't make sense that it would - for me I don't use iCloud anyway so deleting made sense. I didn't do it hoping it would fix things. I was just surprised to see my informaotn out there when I "thought" I never synced.

I’m having this same issue and it’s infuriating. I stand with OP and everyone else who wants this fixed!

Along with submitting feedback to Apple (which I have also done), I think we need to make noise on social media; particularly Reddit and X/Twitter. If Apple gets a good lambasting over this in the public eye it may get their attention.

Hopefully we’ll get some form of fix soon!

It is absolute fact. If you don't turn on some of the data features on each phone, that's a choice you made. But the data is available, so your assertion it is categorically untrue is wrong. It is the exact same iCloud account on each device which shares the same ID. The only difference in this scenario, is the call logs are merged and you can't undo that. But everything else can be shared, including photos, notes, messages, email, etc.

Hello, CB297,

Sometimes my calls took hours to sync between phones, but they did eventually. To trigger a sync I found that having the two phones call each other did the trick - A calls B, then B calls A without having to answer, just the call. Sometimes I had to do it twice - after that, the call log was on both of them, unfortunately.

If i just use them normally, the biggest period that they stayed unsynced was about 12-14 hours.

You can do this test to verify, if it’s not an issue for you.

Best regards.

Simple solution is to log out of your ID on your work phone. Thats what I did at first until I found a temporary work around, I have also not updated my work phone to the latest IOS version, so I am not sure how long it will work.

Not sure what apple is thinking doing this. Its a big mistake.

I cannot speak for others, but I cannot use my work email for a ID, so all we can do is wait, we have alot of apple devices that are not working correctly because of apples stance on their ID.

This will not be good for corporate phone sales, good for android phones and google phones.

I have warned alot of my coworkers about this update and avoid downloading it on their workphone and personal phone. Its more trouble than its worth.

Valacious wrote:

Apple have always allowed you to do it,

I think more precisely, Apple didn't prevent you from doing it. But, it's pretty clear, at least to me, that they don't have any interest in making sure that you continue to have that ability. The fact that you did was incidental, not intentional. Something they have changed for other reasons has removed that ability and, because it's not something they ever officially supported, Apple doesn't consider anything broken.

But, you should still submit feedback:

Product Feedback - Apple

ZeusTheAngryGod wrote:

Privacy. Don’t we need an 4 digital authorization code to share texting/ iMessages with a iPad or other devices on the same account?

The four or 6 digit code is called a passcode and it's to let you into the device to use it. It has NOTHING to do with the available data in the devices, once you've opened any device on the same Apple ID. It's used to validate you have the credentials to open the device and use it. So again, this is NOT a privacy issue. Use the same Apple ID on multiple devices (regardless whether each device has a different passcode, which Apple actually recommends) has nothing do with the privacy of data available on the devices.

I understand the frustration you and others are having. But this is simply NOT a privacy issue. You have chosen to use the same Apple ID on more than one iPhone. As far as Apple is concerned, they are one account, regardless if they are on two phones.