Messages take forever sync to Mac, if at all

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Messages take forever sync to Mac, if at all

For about the past week, my messages have either been taking forever to show up on my MacBook Pro, or just do not show up at all. I will get the notification on my phone of a new message, but then have to either wait for the Mac, or just finally grab up my phone. I notice it tends to happen more and worse with non-iMessage users, but will still happen with iMessage users as well. I have tried signing out of messages completely on the Mac, but it didn't seem to help, and once I had signed back in and it was loading messages, I had received some, which didn't display.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3)

Posted on May 25, 2018 7:49 AM

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CarlAVII

Community Specialist

May 25, 2018 8:13 PM in response to SalmonGram

Greetings SalmonGram,

Thanks for using the Apple Support Communities! I understand messages are not showing up as expected on your MacBook pro, and signing out of Messages did not help to resolve the behavior.

A good troubleshooting step to take on your iPhone would be to disable the Text Message Forwarding setting for your MacBook Pro. You can tap Settings > Messages > Text Message Forwarding, and you should see your MacBook Pro there as an option for you to disable. After that feature is disabled, let's have you restart your iPhone and then enable your MacBook Pro under the Text Message Forwarding setting once more. See those steps from the following guide: How to forward SMS/MMS texts on your iPhone

You can read more details regarding setting up the continuity between the iPhone and the MacBook Pro from the following support article: Use Continuity to connect your Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple Watch

Set up SMS and MMS messaging

Use this feature with any Mac, iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch that meets the Continuity system requirements. Make sure that your devices are set up as follows:

Each device is signed in to iCloud with the same Apple ID.

On iPhone, go to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive. Make sure that the Apple ID at the top of the screen is the same Apple ID that you're using for iMessage on your other devices. Add a check to your phone number and email address, so that you can be reached by iMessage at both. Do the same on your iPad or iPod touch.

On iPhone, go to Settings > Messages > Text Message Forwarding, then choose which devices to allow to send and receive text messages from this iPhone. If you're not using two-factor authentication for your Apple ID, a verification code appears on each of your other devices: enter that code on your iPhone.

On Mac, open Messages, then choose Messages > Preferences. Click Accounts, then select your iMessage account. Make sure that the Apple ID shown here is the same Apple ID that you're using on your other devices. Add a check to your phone number and email address.

Let me know how the provided steps work for you.

Kind regards.

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Messages take forever sync to Mac, if at all

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