Issues with receiving texts on my ipad

When exchanging messages with Android or non-Apple devices, your mother will need to use Cellular SMS/MMS messaging. When exchanging messages with other Apple Users, your mother's iPad and iPhone will instead likely be using Apple's iMessage service. You can differentiate between iMessage and SMS by the colour of the message bubble; blue bubbles are iMessage, green bubbles are SMS.

An iPad, whether a Cellular model or not, is not capable of directly accessing Cellular Voice or SMS/MMS Messaging features. An iPad with either WiFi or Cellular connectivity alone can only access IP-data services. If you have added an eSIM or a physical DataSIM and Cellular plan to a WiFi+Cellular model of iPad, the number associated with the SIM card is only used to identify your account for billing purposes. This number is not used for making calls or sending messages.

However, when paired with an iPhone, the capabilities of iPad significantly broaden to include access to Cellular Voice and SMS/MMS Messaging services of the associated iPhone - relayed between iPad and iPhone over WiFi using Apple’s continuity features.

More information about Continuity and the relevant Cellular services can be found here:

Continuity

Use Continuity to connect your Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Apple Watch – Apple Support

SMS/MMS Messaging

How to forward SMS/MMS text messages from your iPhone to your iPad, iPod touch or Mac - Apple Support

As you mother does have an iPhone - verify that both iPad and iPhone are signed-in to iCloud and iMessage with the same AppleID. To exchange SMS/MMS messages (green bubbles) from the iPad, you must also explicitly enable Text Message Forwarding for the iPad on the associated iPhone...

On your iPhone:

Settings > Messages > Text Message Forwarding - set to ON - and explicitly enable the iPad from the list of devices.

Also ensure that Messages in iCloud is enabled on both iPhone and iPad:

Settings > [Your Name / AppleID] > Messages - set to ON

The reason your texts are going to your mother's iPhone but failing to show up on her iPad is because you are using an Android phone.

When an iPhone user texts an Android user (or vice versa), it travels as a standard cellular SMS/MMS text message (green bubble), not an Apple iMessage (blue bubble). iPads do not have cellular texting capabilities on their own; they rely entirely on the iPhone to "mirror" and forward those green SMS text messages over iCloud. Since she receives everyone else's texts on her iPad, her overall settings are correct, but the link specifically for your contact card has broken.

Your intuition was exactly right—adding her as an emergency contact on your Android device is the likely trigger. When you did this, your phone changed how it formats or routes your contact information, or it may have automatically enabled RCS messaging on your end, causing Apple's Text Message Forwarding system to get confused and drop your specific thread on the iPad.

To fix this, your mother needs to reset the connection for your specific contact on her iPhone:

• Re-link the Text Message Forwarding: On her iPhone (not the iPad), go to Settings > Apps > Messages > Text Message Forwarding. Toggle the switch next to her iPad OFF, wait 10 seconds, and toggle it back ON. This forces the iPhone to re-register the iPad for all incoming SMS formatting. [1, 2, 3]
• Fix Your Contact Card on Her Phone: Have her open her Contacts app, tap your name, and select Edit. If your phone number is labeled as something custom or unusual, change the label to Mobile. Additionally, if she has multiple entries for you (like an email address or a second number) merged into one card, separate them or ensure only your current mobile number is active.
• Check Her Send & Receive Settings: On her iPhone, go to Settings > Apps > Messages > Send & Receive. Ensure that her phone number is checked at the top. If it is unchecked, the iPad will lose the ability to mirror SMS texts sent to her phone number.

On your end, go into your Android messaging app settings and verify if RCS Chats (or Advanced Messaging) was recently turned on when you changed her contact status. If it was, try toggling it off temporarily to see if her iPad immediately begins picking up your standard SMS texts again.

If these steps don't bring the messages back, let me know:

• When you text her, does the message bubble on her iPhone show up as green or blue?
• What Android phone brand (Samsung, Google Pixel, etc.) are you using?

We can look into more specific device fixes with that information.

It's considered proper, if you're going to copy and paste from an AI, as you have obviously done here, to acknowledge that the work isn't your own and that you got it from an AI. You should also note whether you were able to test this yourself. If you have not, say so. AIs do not always give accurate information.

Can u stop fighting please? Let’s focus on helping people. Yeah! I copy pasted 2-3 replies but the rest all are mine and as per my technical knowledge which is obviously correct. I am here since September and I have not copy pasted a reply from AI. This and 2 more replies are copy pasted but what is the use of fighting? I am not retaliating. I am trying to understand ur perspective.

And copy pasting doesn’t mean I know nothing. I know a lot, beyond my age. I am 13. I have an iPad. So, I help other Apple customers because of my deep understanding of the software and a good understanding of hardware issues related to software.

aashmansingh_4 wrote:

Can u stop fighting please? Let’s focus on helping people. Yeah! I copy pasted 2-3 replies but the rest all are mine and as per my technical knowledge which is obviously correct. I am here since September and I have not copy pasted a reply from AI. This and 2 more replies are copy pasted but what is the use of fighting? I am not retaliating. I am trying to understand ur perspective.

I'm not fighting. I am giving you advice. And no, your technical knowledge is certainly not always correct (no one's is). You copied and pasted that, as evidenced by the fact that you left in the links to the references. I didn't say that you couldn't do that. I said you should be upfront about it so that people know where the information is coming from and can evaluate it appropriately.

aashmansingh_4 wrote:

Nobody gives credit to AI not even LotusPilot who is so active. She is also copy pasting from Google, which is evident from the links provided. U don’t say to that person. Why only me?

Lotus Pilot has spent years crafting their answers. They are not simply copying and pasting from AI. I know this because I have been reading their answers since well before AI was in common use.

aashmansingh_4 wrote:

Nobody gives credit to AI not even LotusPilot who is so active. She is also copy pasting from Google, which is evident from the links provided. U don’t say to that person. Why only me?

To be absolutely clear - and for avoidance of any doubt - as a point of fundamental principle I do not and will not use (or copy from) AI. I also don't copy from questionable sources such as Google or other aggregation services.

Unlike you, Ashman Singh, all my contributions here are my own work.

When you stop blatantly copying and pasting AI and Google material and passing this off as your own - or at least make clear your sources when you do so - other contributors here will likely stop challenging your plagiarised and often inaccurate/incorrect contributions to this Community.

You might usefully review the Terms of Use that govern participation here - in particular Conditions B.4 and B.9.

Submissions

4. Test your answer. When answering a technical question, if possible, make sure your Submission works on your own Apple device before you post it.

9. Material submitted must be your own work or work to which you have a license. By posting a Submission, you warrant and represent that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the information contained in your Submission. Apple has the right, but not the obligation, to remove any Submission that is wholly or substantially created by using generative AI tools. Generative AI tools include image generators (such as Midjourney or Stable Diffusion), large language models (such as GPT-4, PaLM, or Claude), code generation tools (such as Copilot), audio generation tools (such as VALL-E or resemble.ai.), or any other tool or system that primarily functions to automatically generate content or answers for a user.

Apple Support Communities Use Agreement - Apple Community

stapler 2 wrote:

Tried all of your suggestions but nothing seems to work.

The only new piece of advice on here that I didn't try was the RCS messaging option. It doesn't matter whether I turn RCS Messaging on or off she still is nothing getting anything on her i pad. Her devices are so old that there is no option for RCS messaging on her devices. Guess she'll just have to deal with me on her phone, lol.

Thanks anyways for all of your help.

To use RCS, the both the iPhone and iPad require iOS/iPadOS 18 or later to be installed - and (b) a mobile data plan from a network provider that supports RCS messaging on iPhone.

Has she checked to make sure she’s logged into her iPad with the same account as her iPhone?

Nobody gives credit to AI not even LotusPilot who is so active. She is also copy pasting from Google, which is evident from the links provided. U don’t say to that person. Why only me?

stapler 2 wrote:

Thanks for all the info guys and gals. I'll definitely try it out.

Sorry about the digression.

Best of luck.