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

darrinofmaplewood wrote:

They sure did, if that's what you want to call it. And? My phone is still merging their messages into one thread on my phone.... Not theirs!

If they insist on violating procedures, your only solution is to avoid trading messages with them. Again, Apple has ALWAYS stated that Apple IDs should not be shared.

Lawdog35 wrote:

I believe it’s to nudge people into creating a separate Apple ID per device. Wether it’s intended to be a nudge or not people should have gotten a warning that after updating to ios12 it’s a good possibility that if u share the same Apple ID with someone your convos could get mixed up

No it's not. First of all, "people" should have ALWAYS kept their IDs separate. IOS-12 has provided a MAJOR benefit for those of us that use iPhones in the manner that they're supposed to be used.

JenLBeigh wrote:

Even after people have made new Apple IDs so they now have their own (yes I know they already should have) it is still not fixed!!

Once the mistake has been made, correcting it is not a simple matter. Go through this thread and other similar threads. One of the more experienced forum members (look at the "level") posted a link to the correct procedure.

"The fix is for everyone to use their own free separate Apple ID. Here are helpful links to get you started -"

If you've been following the thread, that doesn't seem to help (at least for many people)...

Forbes had an article about this how shared Apple ID is the problem, my wife and daughter are both getting my messages and it’s not been embarrassing yet but this is ridiculous. When you send a message to a number/person it should go to that number Apple ID should have nothing to do with this.

I used to participate in iOS beta software but got tired of repeated message/SMS/iMessage related issues. iOS 12 is not a beta Apple you are better than this!

I explain in this post how you can have a new apple id and NOT lose everything, its really simple as well.

Basically you have the current apple id for icloud and for imessage and facetime use the new apple id for that person.

Re: 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

Refraining from getting involved in the whole shared Apple ID vs. Family Sharing issue here, because I am over it, I would also say that even just sharing an Apple ID from my iPhone to iPad has caused issues, and I don't believe Apple has any sort of edict that we need to have unique Apple IDs for our iPads as well (unless I missed that particular memo.) Further, as other people have stated, some people have two phones (one for work, one for personal use) with one Apple ID, which is also causing merging problems.

I think your last sentence says it all - Apple has settings for send/receive and start conversations from, but they are not respecting those settings. While in some cases I see the advantage of merging conversations (whatever the intended purpose was to begin with), I think not giving consumers the right to opt out of a forced merge was short-sighted. I can only hope that with Forbes and Mashable picking up on the issue, some sort of fix (or even a rollback) is in the works.

Having same issue since updated. Talk with senior adviser for 1.5 hours on Monday. Thought it was fixed. Two hours later messages merged (?) again... they did a follow up call today. Let them know it was still happening... . They are telling me it is due to more then one person using the same Apple ID.

I am the only one that text this family member that is having the issue. Very concerned that it will happen with other people I texted with. The text I send to my son is going to my daughter in law ????

The following work-around failed and I’m surprised that it did. Here’s what we did:

A, B and C all shared an Apple ID. B now has their own. A and C share an Apple ID. All three turn off iMessage. A and B cleared their histories of any messages that involved A, B or C in any combination.

A sends a text to B

A sends a text to C

“A” sees different conversation histories for each in Messages and the history only contains the texts noted above

“A” shuts down their phone and powers it back up. On A’s phone, the two previously-separate conversation histories of B and C are combined.

Hoping that this input helps Apple

rockmyplimsoul wrote:

OysterDePoyster wrote:

A, B and C all shared an Apple ID. B now has their own.

Just curious, when B established a new ID, did A and C delete B from their contacts, and re-create B using the new ID's email address as well as B's phone number? The email (ID) in B's contact entry may help differentiate B from past history on the server (just speculation).

Also, think about what happens when an iPhone user decides to change to an Android phone ... they need to deregister their phone number with Apple so that the server knows not to route iMessages to that phone number, and instead allow them to go out as SMS messages (from a sender's iPhone). I have to wonder if a similar thing needs to be done to break free of a shared Apple ID, i.e. perhaps B needed to turn off iMessage, unregister the phone number, wait several hours, then re-enable iMessage (again, speculation). Might be worth a try.

Deregister iMessage on your iPhone or online - Apple Support

Hi rockmyplimsoul,

You just touched on my biggest issue with this and why I feel Apple should have done more to prepare users. What if the users in the scenario you two are describing don't live near one another? How can you convince "users A & C" to delete years worth of history on their phones if they don't want to?

Everyone keeps assuming that the people having the problems are the ones who are sharing Apple ID's but they're not. Users who message people who share Apple ID's are having their conversations merged as well. Clearly this is possible since the issue didn't happen before the update.

This is a terrible problem. I have 4 family members (myself and three kids) on a single icloud account. My wife has a separate icloud account. After upgrading their phones to iOS12, my wife started reporting that the wrong messages were going to the wrong kids. I had not updated my phone yet (work phone) so I seemed unaffected. Did the usual; make sure only configured to send/receive from their respective phone numbers, signed out of icloud. I even created separate icloud accounts for all the kids but it still threads messages or sends them to the wrong phone. All phones do use the same account for iTunes purchases, perhaps this is an issue. After creating new icloud accounts for everyone I deleted all messages from all family members to each other - individual and group - from everyone's phone. Issue persists. I have even seen the header of a text message switch names from "Kid A" to "Kid B" as I watched. Apple needs to fix this problem. There is no justifiable explanation for it to work this way intentionally.

I just wanted to add my voice to this problem.

I have 4 phones on our family account. My wife and I share an apple ID to sync our email, notes, calendar, reminders, bookmarks ... essentially everything you can sync on an apple ID. My two daughters have their own separate apple ID's and are in our family applied ID group. I have a separate apple ID for my business and sync lots of information between my devices at work (15 or so apple devices). We, as a family, sync around 10 apple devices (computers, iPads, iPods, and 4 iPhones).

This problem is a major problem for me both on the family level and the business level. Apple clearly designed previous OS's to allow for multiple devices on a single apple ID. That was an amazing thing to sync data and calendars, notes and reminders etc. Isn't that the idea of an apple ID? To allow people to sync information easily?

Now, one of my daughters has a hard time sending texts to either me or my wife. This has been a critical thing when we are attempting to pick her up from activities with school or friends. It has been confusing and could potentially be a safety issue.

My wife and I have to stay on the same apple ID in order to easily sync our busy life. We have 4 kids, 3 Jobs, and plenty of other things going on in our lives. Apple shouldn't screw with this.

I'm disappointed to hear how Apple customer service is dealing with this. I have been a loyal apple customer for 20 years.

I cannot delete all of my text messages as many of them have critical data. I cannot restart all my phones from scratch, as two of them have critical data and I'm sure my daughters do not want to lose some of their data.

There is a lack of empathy, and more importantly, a lack of innovation and creativity on apple's part with this problem. And I think some serious liability when it comes to communications between parents and children that are either unintended or simply go unreceived. Safety and trust concerns abound here.

I apologize for not having a solution, but I wanted to add my voice to this thread in hopes that apple pays attention.

There was a time that they would have. That time may be over.

Also for the record:

My one daughter's phone is the one combining messages from my wife and I. She can only reply to the one parent who most recently sent a text. If she tries to send an independent message to one of us, it goes to whoever sent the last text. We cannot have a group text between us any longer. I have deleted us as contacts on her phone. I have deleted our conversations from her phone only because I don't want to loose the the texts from her to me or my wife. I have disabled iMessage and am only sending SMS texts. I have attempted to set up different threads for my wife and I by manually entering in those texts. It doesn't matter. IOS 12 seems to want to combine my wife and I no matter what. Our other daughter's phone has not done this yet. This all started with the update to iOS 12

Same issue...with iOS 12 - my family text string, and also individually texting people in our family is totally messed up. We are all on the same Apple ID, and have been for years. We have kids, and we buy their Apple products for them, and hook them all up to our Apple ID for a whole host of reasons. PLEASE APPLE fix this - it clearly is a result of this iOS 12 release and is messing with a lot of people's ability to communicate with their closest contacts. There was nothing wrong with your old messaging app - it appears a desire to fix something that wasn't broken has now created a whole host of problems... PLEASE FIX!!!

I spent 6 hours on this yesterday and talked to 4 different apple specialist through the Apple Care line. Not sure they cared very much and implied they have no intention on fixing this. It is beyond frustrating for those of us that have Apple blood. Feels like I just lost my best friend who turned on me with a sharp knife. If you can't trust who is going to get that text, you can't text. My wife and I manage our household with our 4 young boys thru texts but now it goes to them and not me or her, or at least consistently. Now they can read prior strings of how we were talking about their school, girlfriends we don't like etc...they can now see all the adult stuff we texted between us 6 months ago. How can they be silent here. The Forbes article if you have not read points out other threads similar to this one with all the same issues. I don't want to get 6 ID's for all in my family for my own security reasons and even if I did, apparently that is not the solution either. Tim...hello?

Allowing it and supporting it are two very different things.

Pay attention to this part of what you quoted:

certain services will treat you as the same person. You may see these and other issues:

In other words, Apple didn't try to stop you but, they didn't recommend it either and they warned that there would be consequences.