Why is iMessage splitting group conversations into multiple threads after upgrading to iOS 8?

Im having the same problem. This started with iOS 8 and Yosemite. Im in a group message with 10 people with and without iPhones. Currently have 9 threads and when ever a new person responds a new thread forms. they all have the same people but in a different order, that may be part of the reason why iMessage doesn't recognize them as the same conversation.

As I'm writing this post 3 new threads opened and other people with and without iPhones are mentioning the same problem

hope apple can fix this. VERY annoying

All 5 of the people (all are iPhone users) in our family are having this same problem! We used to have a single iMessage thread consisting of all 5 of us which went back for years. Now there are at least 4 conversation threads with the same group members. The system seems to randomly take a response to the group and creates an entirely new thread! I have the same thing happening with other group threads as well!

A conversation with Apple support was of no help whatsoever. The only thing they could recommend was to erase all of the group messages and start over. That might be acceptable for some of my conversations, but the ones that go back for years with my wife and all 3 children are things that I don't want to give up.

Logically, it would seem that the iMessage database could be repaired and the separated threads recombined!

I am having this issue also. Have an iPhone 6, MacBook, and iMac that are both running Yosemite. iPhone has 8.1. My brother also has an iPhone 6, and has no problem with the group conversations, even if we're in the same group text. His will show all the contacts in the group, while mine will only show 10. The only real difference we have between our setups, is that he has service through Verizon, and I'm on AT&T.

Following this thread, and hoping to get a fix soon.

How wonderful, what an easy fix, and all these smart people missed it !

No, wait, it didn't work, sigh

Hey Apple, seriously how hard would it be to consolidate two different threads? Yeah yeah I know there's a lot of variables, but if it just works then use your brains to figure it out, this is a really really really embarrassingly sloppy Microsoft/Google-ish screw up.

Fix it, fix it now

Does this remind anybody of when they first did iCloud and totally screwed up everybody's data ?

Someone got fired over that, I'm just saying...

Good day all. There is actually a pretty easy fix for this, and the best news is, you don't have to delete groups, and you will not lose chat histories.

First, go to your messages list, and for each conversation that SHOULD be part of the original group, go to details, and remove any and all group names.

Reboot device or restart Messages

Go to each conversation and update its details to include all of the contacts which should be in it. Do this for every orphaned conversation fragment. *I found that I had to also send a test message to the modified group after I changed the participants.

Reboot device or restart messages

With the group names removed and the recipients updated, all of the fragments will consolidate when the Messages app restarts. If you still have some rogue bits, double check the steps a second time, and make sure the participants are correct. If problems persist after that, see advice above about making sure your contacts are correct, and that iMessage is using consistent contact information across devices.

Each participant will have to do this on their own device.

Looks to me that the root cause is related to group names. Like others, I did notice this around the same time as an IOS 8 update. Personally, I stopped caring after my groups were sorted out. I'm not getting paid to investigate bug fixes, I just wanted my groups to work again. I haven't tried adding names to the repaired chats yet, so idk if that will rebreak it.

Sorry Scovio, but that does not appear to be the problem in my case. I am using an iPhone 4s. I followed your instructions but found no "group name field." I was not surprised, since I never created a group in the first place. I simply added the three contacts that I wanted to send the texts to. I have deleted all the threads between the four of us, as well as any threads between any of us individually, then turned off iMessage and FaceTime, rebooted my phone, reactivated iMessage and FaceTime. I have asked the other three parties to also delete any threads between any of us, whether individual or group. Two of us are on Android (previously on iPhones), and they both have deregistered their numbers with Apple, which said neither of their numbers were registered with iMessage. The two Android users receive my texts initially, but when they reply, the phone automatically assigns that reply to a separate thread just between that person and me. Maybe I'm missing something, but I've spent hours researching and tweaking this issue to no avail. At this point, I'd like to throw this piece of crap phone against the wall and see if that fixes it, but in reality I think we're just going to use What's App, which works seamlessly. Pretty disgusting, Apple.

Same problem here -- group messages are splitting into separate threads. There seems to be no pattern to the problem. Evidence:

(A) I have one thread w/ 5 people, all iPhones (all are iOS 8). Some of the group's texts arrive in the group thread, but some come in separately as if from an individual. If I reply to the "individual," some people see the reply but others do not. The rest of the group is having the same problem (with our group and with other groups). We've tried everything suggested here and in other discussions - signing out/in, resetting, deleting all threads and starting over, etc. But the problem keeps coming back.

(B) I have another thread w/ 3 people (two iPhones iOS 8.1, one Android) with similar problem. I can text to both people in the group thread but they each receive my text separately. If they text to the group thread, I receive theirs in separate threads.

This is getting ridiculous. Texting on iPhone is now worthless.

We have finally solved our problems. I'll explain what we did, though from the sounds of the other responses, my fix won't work for everyone. There were 5 in our group. Initially, not everyone in the group could even receive a message from me (I'm on an iPhone with iMessage enabled), so we started testing. Three of us were on iPhones using ATT. The other two were using android phones with Verizon, I believe, and both of them had had converted from iPhones with ATT, where they had enabled iMessage. Neither of them had turned off iMessage before switching over to Android phones, so we started by deregistered their phone numbers with iMessage using this Apple support page: https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage. When that was done, we all deleted every message ever sent between any of the five of us, whether single or group messages, and rebooted our phones. I believe some of us also tried resetting our network settings. At that point, a new group message from me was successfully received by all, and replies from all but one person were successfully received within the group message. No one had ever renamed a group message, so that did not appear to be the issue for the remaining person. It ended up being a settings issue on that person's Android phone - she did not have group messaging enabled, so her phone was not able to reply to a group message. Instead, it replied back in a separate thread. Once she changed the setting and rebooted her phone, problem solved.

YES! Please someone fix this problem!!!!

Yes! I have this problem too. So do most of the people in my group threads. We've all got iPhones, but also text from iPads and Macs. I've had one group split into as many as five threads. There seems to be no fixing this. Help!

For me, it's happening when we have a group message that includes older devices running previous versions of iOS. So far, the group message has been split into about 10 threads. Really hoping Apple can patch this soon.

I am having the same problem also. Everyone appears to be on the New iOs most of the phones are 5's or 5s' I have the only 6. The newest issue was this weekend I sent a text to 2 members of the group text in a separate text. One of them received it in the group text and replied in the group text not the one with just the 3 of us.

if you're getting multiple messages it's likely they are sending from different devices, iPhone & iPad. Go under settings/imessage/send & receive and make sure all devices are set to start conversations from the same phone number (or email whichever you prefer) but all devices need to be the same to prevent multiple conversations when they use a different device. Seems to have fixed the problem for me.

Thanks for the tip, but that's not the cause of the issue that most of us are having.

It's an iOS8 problem and very is very bothersome.

Overall I've been quite disappointed with number of bugs in iOS 8. Can't say "It just works" about iOS and OS X anymore.

I upgraded to iOS 8, same issue.

The only thing that I can think of is Verizon and AT&T.

I have a group with like 12 people, 8 iPhones with Verizon, 2 with AT&T (me and my friend), 1 Galaxy S4, and 1 Note.

None of the iPhone users who have Verizon have a problem. Me and my friend have the problem. Every time someone texts in the group it breaks into a thread for each person.