iPhone messages not showing contact names

None of the above worked but I just got it fixed. (The numbers instead of names happened to me because I signed out and into icloud trying to fix something)

So I went to Settings > Contacts > Short Name and then turned the Short Name in this menu off, and looked at my messages and it was fixed, and then turned short name on again. (I also first played about with orders for the Sort Order and Display Order in Contacts before going to short name, not sure if this had an influence)

That worked for me! I toggled the short name option in the settings>contacts>short name off and on and the names were back. Thanks so much. My issue began for the exact same reason yours did.

Close Messages completely and restart your phone.

Tap the home button twice to bring up the app multitasking screen. Swipe to find the Messages app and then swipe up on the preview window to close the app.

Restart your phone and then see what happens.

Diana.McCall wrote:

Hi dsewanee. Try making a trivial edit to one of your contacts. Then restart the device, power off, not just sleep.

That is exactly what worked for me very recently when I had to backup and re enter my contacts from an Exchange email account that I was losing at work.

I used a third party app from the App Store to backup and restore the contacts and then made a minor edit to one contact and all of the names reappeared rather than the phone numbers.

I had a similar issue occur after a migration from iPhone 6 to iPhone X. The settings were set a specific way under the iCloud settings for the iPhone 6 and it will transfer not just the data, but the settings too. When I logged off from my old device out of iCloud. The numbers on the messages for the iPhone X showed without names. Although the names and contacts were under the contacts app.

This is what I did. Settings > Name > iCloud > Contacts. Contacts were enabled. So I disabled. An re-enabled while selecting merge. This did the trick!

I tried restarting the phone, changing something minor in a contact, disabling/re-enabling MMS, and toggling Short Name setting for Contacts off and on with no luck. As soon as I changed one contact’s phone number (added +1), however, all the names came back to my Messages. Thanks @ApolloKpan!

no need to remove and re add contacts, and restart everything. Here it is.

General>Language & Region> Change region to your region,

mine me was set to America for some reason. Changed it to aus and fixed it. If it is set to your region change it to something else and back again.

I experienced this problem with my iPad. When I went to look at the contents of the Contacts app, I noticed that there were no contacts so it occured to me that I might have disabled the cloud syncing for contacts i.e. the iPad was not accessing the contacts from my iPhone. To fix:

Go to <Settings>, tap on your apple ID at the very very top left of the page, tap on <iCloud>, make sure the button beside <Contacts> is on (green).

This fixed things for me 🙂

Yes that actually fixed my issue thanks. Started after needing to log out of iCloud on my phone. Once I re logged the issue appeared.

Changing Short-name from Settings>Contacts>Short Name change to any setting get back in messages and you should see the change from numbers to contact name. After change the setting back to what it was or need.

Had the same trouble with the other options. I resolved by changing my default contacts from Exchange to iCloud and then switching it back. Everything reloaded correctly after that.

For my iphone 7 with some fairly heavy corporate device management, I had to use a variation of Stanners10 "Short Name" fix to get it to work. Go to: Setting > Contacts > Short Name. Then, select a different name format preference. Mine default was "first name & last initial" so I selected "first name only." That fixed the issue. I didn't have to toggle the Short Name off, just changing the name format worked for me. I was then able to revert back to my initial name format preference.

Okay, I had this exact issue and tried many of the recommendations with no luck. For me the real issue was the account where I stored the original contact information. I use a Excahnge account rather than iCloud so my solution came by first going to Settings -> Accounts & Passwords and confirming the account was connected then over to Settings -> Contacts -> Default Account and selected the Exchange account as my default. Good luck!!

I had the same issue. I am NOT syncing contacts to icloud but rather to GOOGLE contacts and I have gmail app installed also. I found that my gmail app was greyed out but once i opened it, the contacts reappeared in chats and call log. I suppose turning on and off the contacts in google account might also fix things--

Settings / Accounts & Passwords / Gmail / contacts

This worked for me. Sign out of Icloud (Settings... “Apple Id, iCloud“). At the bottom on the right hand pane “sign out”. Delete all info? Yes.(it will all come back when you sign in)

After you are signed out of iCloud, push your home button (the big round one) and your power button at the same time. Hold both until Apple icon comes on the screen. Release buttons.

Ipad will restart shortky after. Now sign back into iCloud by reversing the sign out process.

This worked for me. It also solves some other iMessage problems.

For some reason my iPad sometimes decides to sign out of iCloud. This procedure fixes those problems for a while. It appears that iMessage on an iPad uses iCloud.

Hi dsewanee. Try making a trivial edit to one of your contacts. Then restart the device, power off, not just sleep.