iOS 26 - iMessages no longer sync to iCloud

So I rebooted my phone and then was able to hit sync button again. After about 30 minutes it says “Synced 9/16/25” which is when I upgraded to iOS 26. However I have searching and everything working again so I am happy. It’ll get fixed in 26.0.1 I assume.

SOLVED: All you have to do is go to settings>Apps> Messages and leave Screen Unknown Senders and Filter Spam to ON. Sync iMessage again under iCloud and all your messages will sync properly now on all your devices.

Vinnymallow wrote:

SOLVED: All you have to do is go to settings>Apps> Messages and leave Screen Unknown Senders and Filter Spam to ON. Sync iMessage again under iCloud and all your messages will sync properly now on all your devices.

How many messages do you have?

I am intrigued how you can Force a Sync! I have never come across that.

On both iPhones, Settings, [tap your name], iCloud, see all, make sure “Messages in icloud” is turned on.

I am pleased you do not share an Apple ID account, that would complicate matters.

So I did a simple reboot of my phone and now my messages app allows searching and everything again. Then I came back to same menu and was able to click sync forcefully and now I have a screen that’s slightly different. Will report back tomorrow morning to see if it ever finishes.

[Edited by Moderator]

Having the same issue. Got the phone last week, have spent hours on the phone with tech support, eventually got transferred to a senior engineer. I have followed all their steps and nothing has worked. Reset network settings, turn sync on and off multiple times. Still gets stuck and never finishes. I don’t think they have a fix for it, or know what’s causing it.

I’m having the same issue. My iPhone had all messages downloaded before update to iOS26 and now it’s been stuck since the 15. I have a VERY larger iCloud messages library (270GB) but it’s been on charge and I tried to force sync and it’s not working.

The app doesn’t allow searching or anything because sync is still in progress making the messages app very hard to use.

[Edited by Moderator]

I’m having an issue where my iMessages aren’t syncing but if I go to the contact and hit the message bubble it pops up with all the past messages. Do you think your solution for yours would work? I spent 4 hours at apple today and they couldn’t figure it out. It’s showing syncing paused, maybe let it finish overnight or today, once it’s done let it dot it I’ve right? I have my mom text that I’d like to keep given she passed away and it’s picking and choosing what’s showing up on my phone. I can get to her texts how I mentioned above but would like to not have to do that. I also use my phone for my business and it can’t see past numbers that I didn’t save the contact nor even contacts that I have saved numbers for.

You’re welcome!! So happy to hear it!! And yeah, things can get a little screwy when all of your devices don’t have the same settings. I’ve been receiving word from several others that it worked for them as well. Wish I knew how to boost the reply so everyone struggling can see it haha. All the best!

are you suggesting that screen unknown senders should be a permanent setting?

Possibly it splits the storage, the common theme of this thread is users with a million, two million iMessages, hundreds of GB storage, quite frankly unbelievable waste of money and storage. Without some reduction the remedy may come back when texts reach three or four million?

Maybe a better setting is save messages for 1 year instead of forever?

This is an amazing solution! I've been struggling to fix this for weeks and finally came across your post, so thankful! Did group threads with Android users (SMS/RCS) also come back? Those are unfortunately still missing for me.

Hey, glad it helped! To check for Android messages, go to Messages app > menu icon at the top right (appears like 3 lines) > UNKNOWN SENDERS. Check if they are in there somewhere. If so and you want to keep them, click on the message, scroll to bottom and click MARK AS KNOWN. They should populate back to your main messages. Hope this helps!

Is IOS 26 the end of Apple? It looks like iOS 26 is showing cracks is their systems beyond capacity, WhatsApp issues, passkey failures, auto-fill glitches, Messages not syncing, text being interrupted by auto fill!

Basically a perfect storm of chaos.

Impossible to work with this chaos everywhere! Any ideas?