iMessage - messages arriving in wrong order

I also have this problem. My time is set to auto, no exclamation marks and one one conversation. It also happens to my husband and my mom. I think you need to look into this. Answers get missed when they come up before the question!

Texts have been appearing out of order since the last update. It’s happenibg on all three devices in my family.

We have 2 SE’s and one 6 all up to date.

If I text my wife, her reply plants Before the text I had sent.

This is happening repeatedly in all conversations and on all devices.

Experiencing the same since a couple days ago. Latest update installed last weekend; date and time set to Auto; no red exclamation marks.

Tried the solution of turning off Imessage, restarting and then turning Imessage back on... didn't help with the order of past messages nor has it helped with new messages that are responded to quickly.

I turned off iMessage in “Settings”, turned off phone and rebooted. I then turned iMessage back on. The messages reordered correctly and I’ve not had the problem since. Fingers crossed my luck continues.

Has anyone reported this or worked with Apple support? I did yesterday and they claim they haven’t had anyone report this. If everyone on this thread calls and reports this then maybe they will look into it. The one fix I tried worked in the moment but now the problem is back. I have an open case with support that has been escalated to the Engineers.

Thanks! This seemed to work for me. Was having the issue for 2-3 weeks on my iPhone 6S since installing iOS 11.2.1

For others reading this, I tried switching off iMessage, rebooting phone (off then back on) and switching iMessage back on)

I've tried the iMessage turn off/on thing, but it didn't help for me. But, it seems I've managed to solve the problem, by another suggestion, which I found on another website, resetting the phone's settings (General/Reset/Reset All Settings). I've done this 2 or 3 days ago, and the problem didn't return, so I hope it stays this way.

Plus 1. iPhone 6 on iOS 11.2.1. On quick conversations often the reply shows before the question I asked, this is extremely annoying. This has got to be a bug on the new(er) iOS. I imagine the phone is sorting the messages by timestamp and the times on the phones involved might be slightly off and is causing this issue. How hard is it to just put messages in the order they are sent or received?

Happening here too.

I wonder, though, does it happen between two iPhones running the latest iOS 11, or is it just when one iPhone is iOS 11 and the other iPhone an older version? Could this answer why there may be a slight difference in time stamps on the messages?

For what it's worth as a data point of one, my wife and I are both running the latest version of iOS (her on a 6, me on a 6s) and it was happening to me, but not her. My problem cleared up when I tried the solution posted by Colee1 (page 2) but it doesn't seem to work for everyone.

Solution that worked for me:

We went into

Settings

General

Date and Time

and then turned SET AUTOMATICALLY to OFF and then waited a few moments and turned SET AUTOMATICALLY back to ON.

This seems to have re-synced the phone to the network's clock.

I think the iphone clock was out of sync between me and other users I was messaging with.

Hope this helps others.

Same issue here and it just started recently.

I do notice that sometimes the ordering will fix itself if I close iMessage and come back in: the previously out of order messages go into the proper order. But then new messages are out of order again as they arrive....

Very annoying.

It’s not clear you understood the question. You said “I see that your iMessage contacts appear out of order.” But that’s not the issue. The problem is that messages are arriving out of order.

For example, I ask “What time is it?” You reply “7 o’clock” but the display in iMessage is:

7 o’clock

What time is it?

We see the ... display indicating a reply is being typed, but the reply appears above the question asked.

It is even hard to understand how there is a bug here honestly, there should be no sorting or rearranging anything of any sort here. You text something, it gets added to the end, something is received it gets added to the end, regardless if someone sent a message 2 days ago and you only received it today, just add the darn thing to the end Really how hard can this be?

I keep getting answers to my questions that show before I even asked the question, even if the date and time on my phone were set to October of 1950 this should make no difference at all, whenever you receive something add it to the end of the conversation, that is it. If anyone at Apple think this is working as designed I don't even know what to say.

This is not just cosmetics, you ask a question and keep waiting for an answer for hours because there is nothing after what you asked and then you realized the person already responded hours ago but it shows up somewhere above the question. I hope they get this fixed sometime this year, after they introduce some more cute Emojis.

FINALLY for me it was fixed. Someone posted the other day to go to General/date & time/set automatic (toggle from on to off & back to on). I can not believe it, but it worked for me! Good luck to everyone 🙂