Text messages disappeared

I had this problem today on my iPhone 6S running iOS 11.2.2. I had left my device off overnight, on charge. When powering back on this morning my Touch ID fingerprints and all my messages were gone. A search did not refresh the messages. Turning the phone off and on again did not refresh them. After reading this thread I was inspired to try the following:

• Turned on flight mode.
• Closed all apps one by one by double tapping home button and swiping them up off the screen.
• Pressed and held power button for 5 seconds, then pressed and held home button for 5 seconds.
• Opened the Settings app to the Wallet and Apple Pay screen. I do not use Apple Pay. Double-Click Home Button was enabled, and I changed this to disabled.
• Pressed and held power button for 5 seconds and proceeded to power the device down.
• Powered the device back on and the messages were all back to normal, and Touch ID worked again.

I doubt that all steps were required, but it solved the issue and all of messages and touch ID are back to where they were.

vivreAireAimer,

Did you read the posts above in this thread?

If so, you will see a user reporting success as follows:

• Turned on flight mode.
• Closed all apps one by one by double tapping home button and swiping them up off the screen.
• Pressed and held power button for 5 seconds, then pressed and held home button for 5 seconds.
• Opened the Settings app to the Wallet and Apple Pay screen. I do not use Apple Pay. Double-Click Home Button was enabled, and I changed this to disabled.
• Pressed and held power button for 5 seconds and proceeded to power the device down.
• Powered the device back on and the messages were all back to normal, and Touch ID worked again.

If that doesn't work, you should restore your messages from backup:

Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch from a backup

Hey Folks:

Here's something that worked for me just now. My texts had all disappeared, and just prior none of my texts had a "reply" window.

Anyway, a guy at the ATT store told me to hold down both my "increase volume" button and the power button until the phone shut down. Then turn it back on. Could not believe it: all my texts were back.

Hope this works for you.

Well, I've definitely got a 7+, I definitely pressed the "increase volume" button and the "power" button. Worked for me.

I just had the same issue. My solution was that I had a notification in the “settings” and then it was telling me to set up Apple Pay. I said remind me later and my Touch ID started working and all my text messages came back. So weird. Hope this helps someone.

Burbotspit wrote:

Anyway, a guy at the ATT store told me to hold down both my "increase volume" button and the power button until the phone shut down. Then turn it back on. Could not believe it: all my texts were back.

Correction: to do a forced restart on an iPhone 7/7+, you hold down the power button and the down volume button, not the up. Holding the power button and the up volume button does nothing but raise the volume and turn off the phone.

The directions are different for the 6S and earlier and for the iPhone 8 and X.

If your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch won't turn on or is frozen - Apple Support

Burbotspit wrote:

Well, I've definitely got a 7+, I definitely pressed the "increase volume" button and the "power" button. Worked for me.

Yes, restarting your phone is one of the first, most basic troubleshooting steps. Next time, be aware that you only need to press and hold the power button to do that.

This happened to me today too. I'm on an iPhone 6 running 10.2. Started out when I had all my messages then tried to send a text to a friend & after I hit "send" the text disappeared & didn't show up as a blue bubble. Tried it again & same thing happened. Then I reopened messages and all my history was gone.

Phone is a little tight on space so I tried deleting some videos & apps to see if that would help, nothing so far. Within storage settings it's showing a few GBs attributed to messages so they're definitely all still there, just some communication is broken. Really frustrating. If anyone has a solution, let me know. Don't want to lose them all or have ghost GB's of messages taking up space on my phone when I can't access them.

My mother has the same problem on her iPhone 6, but in her case, the messages haven’t disappeared, they are just invisible. Push ‘Search’, type a letter, any letter, and all the missing messages pop up. I have seen some responses to the effect that iCloud storage might have something to do with this, but that simply isn’t the case. In this case, as in many previous posts, iCloud has available space.

I'm experiencing the same issue. Curious if there ever was a solution. Tried a restart and it didn't work. I notice when I check my storage it says 1.24GB next to messages, so it seems that my messages are still on my phone just not visible to me. I have a iPhone 7 plus. Need a solution badly.

MOUNSER

Perhaps you are out of storage:

Go to Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage under STORAGE go to Manage Storage. It will then show the apps that are using your storage listed in order of usage.

Then focus on the apps with the most storage and delete data as appropriate. Large videos and podcasts that take up a lot of storage, can often times be deleted because you can usually download them again if you want view them.

Note: deleted photos are not necessarily deleted from the phone. You may have to go to Photos > Albums > Recently Deleted and delete them from there to truly free up storage.

If you're not out of storage, try a restart:

Restart your phone

Good luck.

This has happened to me 2x over the last month. At first I didn't think much of it but now I have lost some texts that I absolutely have to have!!! Has anybody figured out a solution to this? I noticed this last night after a video was texted to me. Perhaps that's a factor?

This just happened to me last night. I've since updated and none of the texts are back. Plenty of storage and years of nonsensical loyalty to a company that can't so much as comment on this MONTHS OLD thread. Hey Apple- people care when they lose work messages, contacts, texts and photos from/of deceased loved ones, and memories we can't get back. Superior emojis and blue texts bubbles aren't enough to keep this customer around anymore.

The iPhone has had this disappearing SMS problem for more than 5 years but there is no good solution. I just don't understand why they are not trying to solve this when thousands of their customers for so many years are facing this problem. They should put priority on this. Is there anyway we can petition them to come up with a solution?

Unfortunately they don’t really care about a few clients until it goes viral! They don’t have time for us! They are busy on making new IOS’s to make your older phone obsolete so you need to buy new phones! $$$$