Why is iMessage combining two contacts into one thread. I can only text back the last one that messaged me. This started with iOS 12

I agree. It affects people who share Apple ID's and the people who simply communicate with them. As you state about the (forced) merged thread. My experience is that it's randomly selecting the person (not just the last person who messaged you). For instance, on my phone if I'm texting John and my phone shows John, my message is actually sent to Sue. Even though the last message i received came from John, but new message was delivered to Sue.

I believe the issues are interconnected and I agree it's caused by people who share Apple ID's but the problem is still that I cannot control how people use their Apple ID's and now I cannot trust my phone when it says that I am messaging a particular person. IMO Apple has delivered a fatal blow to their iMessage App by making it unreliable. How can I know if I message someone new and they happen to share an ID with someone that my message is going to the correct person? I have no way of knowing if they share their Apple ID or not. Apple needs to respect the settings people have on their devices and not link these numbers on their servers.

Wesley is correct. From what I've read from other threads, Apple makes this connection on their server. There is nothing we can do but wait for Apple to fix it. Turning off iMessage hasn't been a solution for others on this thread either.

Turning off your icloud backup is just going to leave you without a backup should anything ever happen to your phone.

All

It’s this type of dialogue that will help the folks who are reading this and troubleshooting this issue or, amongst us, come up with a work around. I will try to reply to the questions asked of me here.

The nature of this situation implies that Apple does not want this problem and that it’s a bug. If an end user is to change behaviors, Apple would have advertised what those changes should be. The fact that they did not implies that this is an unwanted behavior by Apple.

In my scenario, A and B live together. C is in college, but we communicate our various work around attempts via phone calls.

As far as deleting a years worth of history in an attempt to find a work around, it’s either that or do nothing and keep intra-family communication broken. Both options stink.

In my scenario, B established their own Apple ID. To the outside world, as far as email/voice/text communication goes, nothing needs to change on how the outside world communicates with B. No other identifying info on B changed. Further, the information in “contacts” on A and C’s phone on how to communicate with B shouldn’t have to change. In my case, A, B and C all have their own Gmail/Hotmail email IDs.

A work around that calls for unregistering a phone number then re-registering it is kind of “extreme”. I’m entertaining work arounds that we can implement on our own.

A couple of thoughts:

To me, the ultimate attempt at a work around is that A, B and C all obtain unique Apple IDs, turn off iMessage in messages, log out of their Apple ID in FaceTime, disallow iCloud text messaging, delete all texts previously involving A, B and C in any manner and retrying the test of sending one message per person, shutting down a phone and seeing if messages collapse together after booting up.

Also, the fact that this is taking so long to resolve, I’m thinking that in Apple land, the problem isn’t so much how to correct the software (... that’s seemingly as simple, on their end, to use the same iMessage threading protocol that they used in iOS 11.X...), but the cleanup of the damage done to the data as a result and the possible difficulty of identifying how to go through a bunch of messages that were unwantedly merged and having forensic data to determine, in my case, how to put B and C’s data back into their own buckets as opposed to their merged state.

Only Forbes has had coverage of this issue. The tech community and Larry Magit’s of the world need to shed light here to the public-at-large - TV ... Radio ... etc

Interestingly enough, I have been having this same issue since I upgraded to ios12 which was on September 21st. I had called Apple Support several times and after multiple attempts to resolve I continued to have the issue. I did find a post on this forum that suggested deleting the merged thread of messages which at least allowed me to communicate with my family separately. However, after a couple of hours they would start merging together again. I just kept deleting the thread. Today I have noticed though that they have been kept separate since last night around 7:30pm cst. Is anyone else randomly working now? I really don't know how long it will last but it's the longest it's kept them separate in almost 2 weeks.

My guess is that Apple knew that the new update would do this but it is disappointing that they did not give us a head up. I mean if my wife and I were sending naked pics to each other by text and now my 8 year old daughter is on that string and can now see those pictures, that doesn't make for a good situation. Or the text I am now getting from my wifes new lover who thinks its going to her. Many potential issues that were not very well thought out and turned a lot of us loyal apple customers off (I have spent 6 hours on this today). I just talked to a very nice sr. advisor and the only thing he could think of was to go to settings, messages, send/receive and delete the Apple ID there. Has anyone tried that?

For everyone who keeps claiming this isn’t a bug, here’s a Forbes article listing this iOS 12 iMessage “break” among several faults that Apple JS failed to acknowledge:

https://apple.news/Ae7PcTed0TDCq80SU0aSp3Q

sjvivian wrote:

...and after 5 days strings merging again on some phones...Apple if you are monitoring this, hopefully you’re working on it. Would be great to have any sort of acknowledgement, fix timeline, etc.

No, they are not. If you want Apple to know you have this issue, you can use the Contact Support link at the top right of every page or use the feedback page:

Product Feedback - Apple

Regardless of which method you choose, you will not get an acknowledgement (other than the Apple Support rep acknowledging they received your information) or a timeline for any changes Apple might be considering.

I logged out of Messaging and Facetime with a previously shared Apple ID on all my devices. All users are using family sharing. I then deleted the combined threads. I then tested messaging, and all the threads were separate. This worked for about 12 hours. I then verified that I could still text people in separate threads. I then made a purchase in iTunes.

• Immediately after making an iTunes purchase the threads combined again.
• The Apple ID I used in iTunes was previously shared with others in the family, however those users are no longer using that Apple ID at all, even for purchasing in iTunes.
• So it seems that by just using a previously shared Apple ID in iTunes (or anywhere else?) combined the threads. Can someone verify this?
• I am wondering if the devices must be removed from the account and re-added under the non-shared Apple ID in iCloud. Worse, I wonder if the previously shared ID must be deleted and a new one created. This would be bad, as would your previous purchases not be lost as well?

Do we have a list of things that login with Apple ID from our devices besides iTunes, Messaging, and Facetime?

This would explain why some users don't experience this who use shared accounts, as they may not purchase things from iTunes, or they may not use services that use the shared ID. This also explains why the issue seems so sporadic.

I wish that Apple would exempt family sharing id's from this consolidation.

ios12isverybad wrote:

It just seems that if two contacts had any relationship/links at any point in the past, they are linked forever.

Yes, it can be very ugly. You really should start with this. It's a PIA but it's an extensive iPhone clearing.

If they are using the same Apple ID this will happen.

I have faced this since one of the earliest Betas. Have yet to find a fix. It appears as though making a group chat, and putting effected contacts in will negate the issue.

I put my mother and father into a group chat, and they show up separately (Eg: “Mom: Howdy, it’s mom! Dad: Hi, It is Dad.”

I cannot text them separately, but it does give me contact to both individuals.

Otherwise I haven’t figured out anything. They do use the Family AppleID.

If it helps: you can log into iCloud as your appleID, and the AppStore as a different one. And that separates your iMessage (Eg: iTunes & AppStore is “FamilyAccount@provider.com”. iCloud is “zagioppo@me.com”). Have yet to see if that fixes it. Feel free to try and let me know :)

EskimoMe wrote:

We all use the same apple account.

Apple can't fix that. You have to do it.

Has anyone tried turning off ‘handoff’ and iCloud imessage backup?

Lawrence, you're ignoring that fact that Apple addressed the issue with an UPDATE today. They wouldn't have done that if there wasn't a problem.

I had to create a separate Apple ID.