iMessage not syncing between Mac and iPhone

Back to the basics...

Make sure you have your iPhone 'phone number' set to sync with the messages on the Mac.

1. Bring up Messages.

2. Go to the 'File' menu and select 'Preferences'.

3. Click on the "Accounts" tab and select your iMessage account icon from the left panel.

4. For the "You can be reached for messages at" Make sure the right check boxes are set, in particular you need to have your iPhone phone number checked.

5. Close the preferences.

NOTE: This will take effect for all future messages that are sent but prior messages do not sync up with OSX10.9

Hope this helps!

- Mr. Che

Hi,

As my 5th and 6th paragraph deal with resetting the iPhone to make sure the iMessages server knows it is supposed to be in use I thought I had covered the basics.

As you say though it does make sense to double check it is active on the Mac version.

However the Preferences are in the App Menu and not in the File Menu.

Please Note this is a Mavericks Picture. The Menu spot is the same but some of the Account pane may look different

9:17 pm Friday; August 29, 2014

I have an iPhone 6 Plus on iOS 8.0.2 and an iMac (Late 2013) running OS X 10.10.

I have signed out of iMessage on my iPhone and signed out of Messages on my iMac. I sign back into both of them, and no syncing occurs. If I start a new message from either device, it will show up, but all previous messages do not. Which means that when my iMac is sleeping, any messages my iPhone receives will not show up on my iMac. On top of that, Messages on my iMac will not show contact information (even for contacts showing up in the Contacts app on the iMac), so it just shows a phone number.

So between only showing phone numbers, and only syncing new messages while being awake, using Messages on my iMac is virtually useless, since I would have to constantly be referencing my iPhone to see who is whom and to make sure messages haven't been missed.

Am I missing something here? I thought a Messages sync would be just that; a sync of all messages between my iOS and OS X devices.

Hi,

Check the Contacts app on both the Mac (System Preferences > iCloud) and the iPhone is set to sync.

If required create a Test Mac User account and set up the iMessages account in Messages there and see if that Mac User account has the same issue.

7:11 pm Saturday; October 18, 2014

Almost everything seems to be in sync on my devices: using MB, iphone and Ipad on the latest & greatest OS's.

iMessage and contacts seem to be working fine, working on the same ID (iCloud and just one phone number). New messages pop up on all devices at the same time. " continuity".

however... one annoying fact! If i delete a message from one device, it stays on all the others.

Do you guys have the same experience? and perhaps, hopefully a solution?

Hi,

Since Messages beta in 2012 (May to Dec) that has been the function of the apps.

The "Sync" has always been "Display on all devices" and not anything further.

As the Mac has extra storage space it means conversation can be specifically Saved there and deleted elsewhere.

In that sense it is everyone's experience.

9:42 pm Wednesday; November 12, 2014

Hey Ralph,

Indeed, that makes sense! Would be great if that is optional.

Personally, i want to handle each message (wether it's email , iMessage, whatsapp, regular mail) just once. So, if a message is not worth keeping, I'd like to delete it straightaway and don't bother about it anymore. Now i have to delete it from 4 devices.

Any suggestions how to achieve this? Seems easier than keeping everything :-)

Hi,

It cannot be achieved.

Tell them.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/

7:31 pm Friday; November 14, 2014

I managed to get it to work. It seems there is a new iOS 8 setting in iMessage on the iPhone (don't remember seeing it previously) called "Text Message Forwarding". You have to enable/allow each device to get them to receive messages received on the phone.

I think this kind of works for everyone. I am simply looking for " one-step deletion" .

The text messaging feature is a great feature, by the way!

It's just clogging up... just noticed that message can be auto-deleted in 30 days, make it shorter and i'm always there where I want to be :-)

@Ralph thanks for the advice: i submitted my feedback

Hi,

I see the 30 days thing is on the iPhone (Settings > Messages > Keep Messages).

9:18 pm Wednesday; November 19, 2014

Thanks Danlirong. My imessages where not synchronized. I tried what you did and it made me realised that I never did a Login in iMessage settings on my iPhone. Sometimes Apple is so complex. I don't understand why I need to login in iMessage Settings when I already did a login on iCloud. Whatever, it works now, thanks!

Hi,

The reason is that having an iCloud ID logged it does not mean you are using the same ID in the Apps on a Mac.

The iCloud ID in System Preferences (or Settings on the iPhone) can be set to do the sync stuff like Contacts and Calendars.

iTunes can be another (although I suggest the App store uses the same one for the money link between the two).

iMessages and FaceTime are best severed by the same ID as the Mac version can "Switch" to FaceTime from an iMessages Chat and it gets confusing if you "call" you contact from another ID.

9:04 pm Saturday; January 31, 2015

I was having a similar issue but none of the above solutions worked. The problem was iMessage was turned off on the phone (must have been a ghost because I know *I* didn't do it). All is well again.

Hi, just my two cents on a similar problem. I figure this might be useful for people who are getting a new mac, don't want to use the migration assistant, but want to keep their iChat logs.

My case:

I upgraded from a 2008 iMac to a new MBP 15" this week. I have been upgrading and transferring via backups since OS X 10.2, so I thought I would start with a blank slate this time. iCloud really helps, as calendars, contacts, keychains and other important stuff is downloaded from the cloud. However, I soon realized that my old iMessages (and SMS) were stuck on the iMac. It wasn't a problem to get the MBP to receive and send new messages, but I wanted my chat logs from the past few years with me. Why on earth can't Apple let me just sync all messages from my iPhone to my new mac? Everything is there, and I don't think I am the only one wanting to keep the chat log for reference. (Half related: why can't apple store and sync smart groups in Address book via the cloud?)

My solution:

- quit Messages

- copied the contents of /Users/[username]/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat/Data/Library/Messages/Arch ive on the iMac to /Users/[username]/Library/Messages/Archive on the MBP. The subfolders have dates as names. Messages had been running partly in parallell on my two macs, so I moved the few subfolders already in place on the MBP to the desktop and later deleted them, see below).

- moved the contents of the folder /Users/[username]/Library/Messages/Attachments on the MBP to the desktop, then copied the contents of the same folder on the iMac into the folder on the MBP.

- restart MBP

- start Messages

And voila, all of my messages from the iMac, including attachments, appeared on the MBP!

I lost a some messages, those were received on the iMac but not on the MBP, and were lost because I could not merge chat logs from the same day from the different computers (i experimented a bit before I tried the above solution, including switching iMessages on and off on one or both computers a few times, during this time I received a few messages only on the iMac and some only on the MBP. For chats with the same person on the same day I had to choose between the ones on the iMac and the ones on the MBP). I see no way to edit the chat logs, they are coded in SQL or something and I don't have time, patience, knowledge or tools to do that. It was only a handful of messages, so I can live with the loss!

Preferably one should try this before turning on Messages on the new mac, I suppose, then you probably would not loose anything. Hope this helps someone!

All the best

AtomicDoc