Text message notifications on iOS 9 not recognising contacts

Hi,

I only have a few contacts too. The only connection I can make is that these people have recently gone from iOS to android. Is this the same for yours?

oddly, my iPad displays the name as normal

HI yes my husband has android. I have only got a few contacts with assigned text tones, most are default.

Was your husband on an iPhone previously?

I think you've got something here - two contacts I was having this issue with have both recently either switched To or From an iPhone - meaning the conversation stream had a mix of SMSs and iMessages.. Both swappers kept their number but had to change SIM card..

I wasn't worried about keeping their old messages so I deleted the entire conversation from the recent iPhone to Android switcher, and now their Name from contacts is resolving correctly on the lock screen and my Pebble watch when I receive an SMS from them :-)

If you want to keep the old messages, this probably isn't something you'd want to do, but in my case it resolved it for me..

Glad I could help.

It worked for me too, for the record.

Just adding myself to the list - on 5S on iOS 9.2.1 and have had this issue since 9.0.

I have a group iMessage chat where two of the others' messages appear as the number, and one as the name, and they have a mix of number formatting and +44 prefixes.

A fix would be nice 🙂

Upgraded to 9.3 issue still persists 😟

HHad the same issue here from the start of iOS 9. I think it's starting to spread to more numbers.

CCheck to see if the affected numbers have recently become android users. If so, delete their message history and it fixes the issue

Ugh, yeah I did read that would fix it. I think it ties in with people being android phones although one of them is on an iPhone. Really don't want to delete the messages but it's bugging me big time at the moment.

i take it apple haven't been ar$ed to fix this yet? £600 for a telephone, takes great slow-motion videos of hipsters but can't receive a text message properly. Good work you feckless Tw@ts. Goodby apple, Hello android.

I was having this same issue. After trying all the usual tricks (making sure contact syncing is on, etc, etc) I did this, which worked:

1. Create a new contact on my Mac titled ZZZZ

2. Verify that it has synced across to all my iOS devices

3. After it's synced across, delete it

4. Adjust or delete another contact that was created at least a month ago

5. Confirm all these changes have synced across to all the devices

6. Then go back and check if your Message contact names have updated.

This worked for me (even after turning off iCloud syncing and turning it back on didn't help)

Not the first annoying bug I found and I see Apple ignoring over and over again. Now that there is a billion iOS users it's pretty much impossible to get Apple to listen to any of its users since there are too many of them. I am software developer and I know when most users think they found a bug they usually don't. But this is a bug and it's clearly related to contacts that have message history in SMS and iMessage. Deleting the message history works, but why should I do that? Apple is starting to disappoint me over and over again. Last bug I found took 1 year to fix, despite me going to an Apple store and showing it to them. They have no interest in reporting bugs, the only thing they are trained to do is to replace your device. For a company that claims the best customer satisfaction in the industry that's pretty bad. The real problem is that 100,000 people is is 0.1% of 1 billion. And iOS has got too complex now for anyone to understand it properly or change it without braking it.

I Have had the same problems with phone only numbers showing in messages and not names. Was having to put the number into my contacts to search the name!

However, as previous peopoke have said, if you turn iMessage on and ring a face time number ( person doesn't even need to answer) turn phone off and on and the names should be there.

Okay, I've experienced this issue and finally found an answer. This is definitely not applicable to everyone, but for those who experience only a few random contacts showing up in Messages on your iPhone as phone numbers and not names, here is what I suggest:

Check your contact list for any incomplete / duplicate entries (stored alphabetically under "#").

Example:

I had a contact named "John Smith" in my iCloud contact list. It displayed as "John Smith" within Messages on my Mac, but Messages on my iPhone only ever displayed as "(555) 555-5555". I tried everything (resets, reboots, deleting the contact...) - nothing worked.

In disgust (and boredom, I guess), I started scrolling through my entire contact list. When I finally reached the bottom, I discovered a few contact cards with only phone numbers saved to them. And sure enough, those were the same numbers showing up in Messages on my iPhone in place of the contact names. I deleted the "duplicate" entries, and everything displayed as expected.

It seems the Mac defaults to contacts with names, while the iPhone defaults to those with numbers. I haven't taken the time to figure out why... perhaps the bias is based on which entry was created first, or determined by the device from which the contact originated, or perhaps the iPhone simply defaults to numbers because it's a phone.

Whatever the reason, the solution is simple. Delete the incomplete contact cards, and all is well.