Text message notifications on iOS 9 not recognising contacts

Hi, I don't believe your analysis to be right. I have the issue from time to time and I have verified I have no contacts under # or no duplicate contacts by scrolling through the whole list. I have also run several apps which deduplicate contacts in case there was an issue like this. I also don't sync contacts with iCloud. It may well be that that was the issue for you but it is certainly not the issue for all. This is a bug and I have no doubt about it.

I've had this problem for a while on a 5S and tried various fixes. The oddest thing was that old contacts kept reappearing after a sync with Outlook even though I had previously deleted them.

So that go me thinking about where the contact information was coming from (not using iCloud) and Whatsapp appears to be the answer. Or at least my answer.

When you install this it seems to take a copy of your contacts into the app and after a time (with people changing numbers) it is no longer in sync with your iPhone contacts. So you end up with old phone numbers in Whatsapp conflicting with newer ones in the iPhone directory, confusing your phone so that it defaults to displaying the number only.

My fix was simply to turn off Whatsapp's access to contacts (settings, whatsapp, contacts) and that was it. Fixed.

Have now turned contacts back on and everything is still working...

It definetly seems to be what's app that is causing the problem for me as I only have 2 what's app friends and they are the two that no longer display their names when I get a normal text from them.

Unfortunetly off the access to contacts has not fixed it for me but I will keep trying!

HI all,

I'm not sure if this will solve everyone's problem but for me the issue was that the messages app would not connect the name to number in the messages if the phone number extension I had in contacts didn't match the one I was messaging.

For example, while I lived in Toronto, I didn't add the +1 extension to numbers such as 416-123-4567 and now that I'm in Germany, when Toronto friends message me, the number comes through with the +1 extension and the phone (since my iOS9 update) wouldn't recognize the number as a contact.

My solution... Every person that I message that doesn't have the name come up, I edit the contact to match the extension and it works right away. Hope this helps.

I've had this issue for ages but I finally fou a fix the other day, what you is delete the message thread your an issue with

I have the same issue. Tried most 'work arounds' but nothing works.

The problem started when I upgraded my iPhone 6 to iOS 9. I have since changed operator, and upgraded to a 6s. Granted I simply backed up the 6 and restored on the 6s but still, for a £600+ phone this isn't acceptable.

I also had an issue where by when I swapped operator, when a call came in it would change the name of the operator I was on back to that of the old operator. I ran the iOS upgrade at the time hoping it would fix it but it didn't.

Also, since upgrading my iPhone 6 to iOS 9, any videos that were taken in landscape were cropped! Essentially meaning they have all been rendered useless (or the copies on the phone anyway!)

Lots of bugs in the 8 to 9 'upgrade' which still haven't been fixed... Why do we carry on putting up with this? Oh look - iPhone sales are starting to drop! Doesn't that say something!??!

I had the same issue. Tried all the suggested options, except a back up as I didn't want to lose my data,

then found this on another forum:

What worked for me was associating a text message to an existing contact.

- I opened the text message and clicked on "Details" in the upper right corner.

- Then I clicked on the "info" icon (lower case i with circle around it)

- Click on "Add to Existing Contact"

- Choose the contact name to associate this cell number to

It worked!

This may not help everyone - and is not exactly an ideal resolution - but after trying dozens of suggestions, includinf deleting conversations, resetting factory settings and I have finally resolved it. It actually happened to be an issue wih my contacts conversation. I deleted the whole iMessage conversation from my contacts phone and then they started showing up correctly as a recognised contact! Perhaps this will help some of you.

Ahhhhhhhhhh, I have tried everything and nothing works!

Now on 10.1 and still the issue persist.

Ahhhhhhhhhh! This is actually driving me insane.

Nothing seems to work for me.

I've tried-

toggling the iCloud contacts on/off,

Deleting contacts from phone, from iCloud, from everything and manually re-entering numbers,

Deleting contacts from everywhere and importing from a VCard,

Turning off/on contact access to Whatsapp,

Turning off/on MMS,

Signing in and out of iCloud.

This sort of worked for me. I deleted all the contact message history for the contacts that had an issue with displaying the contact name. Then i went into the contacts and added a new phone type with the correct phone number. Then I removed the existing phone number. Some contacts phone numbers had xxx?xxx-xxxx as the phone number. I just retyped the phone number and that resolved that issue.

An update on my situation-

i gave up, reset my phone and started as new.

Massive pain but not only did it fix the issue but also just made my phone run so much better.

Its obviously an error my iCloud back up developed at some point. I have always used the same back up from back when I got my first iPhone back in the 3GS days.

Im having the same problem but my contact names do not show up at all. Even when I go to my contacts list the names do not show up or the pics I have assigned to the contact show up!! Sometimes rebooting works and sometimes it doesn't! I just set up my new 7 plus and this problem went from my 6 to my 7 so it has to be some kind of iOS bug. Also ever so often I'll go to my email and all of my emails will be gone in yahoo & in iCloud so I have to go to settings and disable my mail then turn around and enable it. Then usually my emails are back. These problems are becoming so annoying I'm considering changing to a different kind of phone. Too many bugs!!

So, it's 2017 (happy New Year everyone!) and we have iOS 10.2 available.

I still have this problem. Can't find a fix. Did it go away with an update for you guys?

Thanks,

Ritchey

Nope. Still there for non-iMessage text SMS contacts on 10.2!