Text messages disappear from lock screen

Change alert styles and settings for notifications

Customize your notifications with different alert styles so you can quickly act on emails, calendar invites, messages, and more.

To add or change an alert style for a notification, go to Settings > Notifications and select an app. Here are some alert styles that you can choose:

• Allow Notifications: Turn on to get notifications from the app you selected.
• Sounds: Have an app play a sound to alert you when you receive a notification.
• Show on Lock Screen: Turn on to see notifications from the app on your Lock screen.
• Show in History: See previous notifications from the app you select.
• Banners: Choose how you want notifications to appear when your device is unlocked. Tap Temporary to have alerts appear on the screen and then go away. Or tap Persistent to have alerts stay on the screen until you act on it.
• Show Previews: Choose what you want to see when you get a notification, like a text message.

That’s one of many things I tried that had no effect. This problem of sms’s vanishing from the lockscreen is regular sms’s too so I don’t see how an iMessage setting would alter that. I posted here a few days ago that I upgraded to ios12 and that fixed the vanishing from lockscreen problem except messages still don’t show up in the notification centre after unlocking. So they 90% fixed the problem in ios12. I did mention this but it seems someone erased my comment.

That’s interesting. Because the only thing that has helped my iPhone to keep texts on my lock screen until I open my phone is to turn off “show in history”. Which I think was a suggestion in either this thread or another one on was reading. So far that is working for me.

I’ve had this problem ever since I updated my iOS to iOS 11 on my old iPhone 6s. I would receive messages and the sound of the notification would work, the screen would light up, but no actual notification would show up on the lock screen or the Notification Center. I tried resetting and then using my backup, didn’t work. I then got a new iPhone 8+. This phone worked fine after being restored from the backup for about a week. Then the same thing began happening again, the text wouldn’t appear on the lock screen or in the Notification Center. Being very annoyed and tired of this issue, I reset my phone and started it up as a new iPhone. I ditched my backups, redownloaded all my apps, and all my messages got deleted. This worked for a couple months. The problem resurfaced a while back, which prompted me to try it again to no avail. I have now chosen to turn off the “Show in History” toggle in the messages notification settings. This seems to have worked, but only for the lock screen. When I swipe down for the Notification Center, the text doesn’t show as I turned off show in history. It’s the price I have to pay for now, which is really quite agitating. I really hope Apple has this fixed by iOS 12 otherwise it’ll be really angering.

I just solved this problem through a bit of googling. I was about to give up finding a solution and then came across this: https://appletoolbox.com/2017/09/no-text-or-message-notification-alerts-or-sound s-on-iphone-fixes/

I run iPhone 7 on IOS 11.4.1

What worked for me was this point:

Change what sends and receives:

settings > messages > send & receive: look under section: iMessage At can reach you. If checked deselect your email addresses. Select only your phone number.

Their guide is really in depth. If this doesn't work for you try their other suggestions.

Hope this can help, cause it is a frustrating problem to have.

Everything works as usual now!

This problem is still going strong in 11.2.1. I added my experience and workaround to a longer thread here: Re: iOS11 notifications disappearing from lock screen

Over a week ago, I spent over three hours with a senior rep at Apple on two different days. Wiped my phone and downloaded a backup form the cloud. The problem was resolved for about five days then started again. I have the latest update and the problem was resolved for three days and started again. The suggestion was that I might need to completely wipe my phone and start as if it is a new phone. I'm not convinced that will work either since the problem is resolved for a short period of time and then starts again. I'm at a loss.

I feel fairly certain it’s the “show in history” setting that’s causing this problem. It’s new in ios11 (when the problem started for all of us) and turning it off has some affect on the issue. And regardless of being off or on our messages do not show in history. Unless it’s addressed during beta testing of ios11.3 I’m afraid we are stuck with this problem for some time to come.

Sadly there is no fix, the “engineers” over at Apple stuffed this up good and proper. iOS 11 has many great features but this vanishing notifications bug is a huge step backwards. I would have bought a new iPhone by now but no way I will buy one while there are people on this thread reporting the same issue you and I are having across an array of iPhone models.

There’s a chance the issue will be rectified when iOS 12 is released as they tend to upgrade these areas with each major release. I wouldn’t bother restoring etc as that hasn’t worked for anyone and will just waste more time. If the phone is in warranty perhaps take it to the “genius” bar and show them, explaining that ALL things have been tried yet the problem still remains.

It is very disappointing and it’s not helped by Apples reluctance to ever acknowledge that they messed up.

This has been happening to me for months now, since iOS 11 for sure.

I'm on iOS 11.2.5, and it happened just now. My phone was on my desk, in sleep mode, a message came in, the display came on and the message appeared momentarily on the lock screen, and simply disappeared straight away. The SMS alert sound played. Then, a short while later (because I didn't actually touch the phone), the SMS alert sound played again, but the message was not there.

This is a serious problem and has caused a number of incidents where the disappeared message caused me big problems. One night I was waiting for our babysitter to text me to pick her up from the bus station, and she happened to text me as I was away from my phone. I didn't see the message, and the poor girl was stranded in the rain - anything could have happened to her! Luckily, I called her to see why she was running late, and she said she'd texted, and sure enough, she had.

This bug will be the death of someone for sure!

Same issue. I have been to the Apple store and done a factory reset losing all text messages and was on the phone with a senior engineer 15 minutes ago. Still have the issue on an iPhone 8 +that is less than 2 weeks old. So frustrating.

The banner notification stays on my lock screen approximately 5 minutes and then disappears making it appear that I do not have any texts.

This is ridiculous!!!

I have updated to ios11.3 by way of beta and the problem seems to have changed. Messages seem to stay on the lock screen (while it is locked) but after unlocking they don’t appear in the history. Well they do for a moment but as you access the history (swipe down) the message automatically removes itself.

I believe this whole situation is due to an imperfect “show in history” setting in the notifications menu. It’s new in ios11 and it doesn’t seem to integrate properly with some apps; namely the Apple native messaging app; what a joke! I honestly don’t see Apple staff being able to help us with this problem. It’s something the so-called programmers need to address because it’s a new setting that’s been broken from the start.

I have spent many hours with Apple discussing this very issue. They really weren't aware of it. Finally, I found someone who said it was first reported in September. After several more reports, it has finally been sent to the engineers. They said very few folks reported it so it has taken quite awhile to gather the info they needed to determine it was a real issue. They don't look at this site...

On my phone, it’s not just the notification that’s disappearing, but the message itself - apparently with no means of retrieval. There are at least 10 texts that came through to my phone and popped up in notifications, but then vanished from the memory before I could read them. They never showed up in the Messages app inbox.

By restoring, do you mean that people have tried completely new installs with no success? I’ve tried restoring from a backup, and that definitely doesn’t get rid of the bug.