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’m having this exact issue with my iPhone X when I text my two children who are off in college. It merges the texts between the two of them. This started after the recent update. They both have an iPhone X, also. I’ve checked and double checked everything in my settings and cant figure out a solution. I had to delete their conversations (which I really hated to do) and it worked temporarily, but now it’s back to being messed up again. In fact, I just tried to text my son directly from his contact info and it went to my daughters text thread. I’m very frustrated.

Exactly! That’s the same issue we are all having after this update. The senior advisors in support are very nice but not helpful as Apple must be trying to force us to all have our own IDs but my guess is that a “heads up” would have been appreciated. I am hoping they read our feedback and fix it on their end but the advisor said they are not. Very very disappointing. I trusted Apple.

I share an Apple ID with my two daughters (one away at college too). Only my younger daughter and i updated to IOS 12. Their texts merged to one thread and i was only able to text the last one who texted me. At first i was able to get around that by starting a new message with the daughter i wanted to text and adding my phone number (I added “me” as a contact) and that worked. Message went to the intended recipient. The replies however were merged. Tonight, i signed out of my Apple ID under messages in settings. I had my daughter (the one who also updated to iOS 12) do the same. So far it has worked. It’s only been about an hour. )we both powered down and back on again). Before I signed out, I deleted both of my daughters contacts and added them again - not sure if that had any effect. Good luck. I know how important it is to be able to keep

In touch with your kids -especially when they’re away at college.

The exact same thing has been happening to my iPhone 7+ ever since I updated to IOS 12 last week!

For a week my phone has merged pretty much every single contact a part of a family - for example, my mum, dad and sister have been merged, my uncle, aunty and cousin have been merged etc. In contacts they all have different numbers and emails, except the younger kids obviously have the same apple id as the parents for security reasons.

I am only able to message the last contact that messaged me, and whenever I go to create a new message to a specific phone number affected by the merging, it automatically changes the contact and the message goes to the wrong person.

This is extremely frustrating as now, if something was to happen, I am unable to contact the correct person.

Last night I also got a bonus! - I was unable to receive phone calls from any of the merged contacts!

(As you can imagine, when this first began to happen Mum thought I was ignoring her messages/calls - not good!)

This is so disappointing that we pay so much money for good quality phones, and yet Apple has failed to fix the problem. I shouldn't have to wait on hold for over half and hour and have the phone hung up for a problem that Apple themselves have caused.

THIS NEEDS TO BE FIXED!

I’m having the same issue. I can’t text one of my daughters - when I do, the text gets sent to my youngest daughter. Our family does share an Apple ID. Is there a fix or do we have to wait for an IOS 12 update? Totally annoyed!

If this doesn’t get resolved by Apple I may be forced to go to Android. I really don’t want to... I just bought a new 8 plus for me and my daughter. I am now using “WhatsApp” to text my family members under my Apple ID because I do not TRUST iMessage. Honestly this has made me sick and wasted time trying to figure it out. This happened right after IOS 12 update. Extremely frustrated!! APPLE DO SOMETHING HERE!!!!

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

Just spoke to Apple and said they expected this and there will be no fix. I linked them to this forum and they said they can’t talk on the issue others are having.

I’m pretty upset over this as a dedicated Apple customer.

My phone is sending messages to my boss and to my bosses son. The other day I sent his son a comment about an employee that I didn’t want the owner to see. It went right to the owner. What is going on???!

Yea. It seems to me there will be major liability problems for apple and this fiasco. If you send a message to one person, and it goes to another, and it does serious damage on either a personal or professional level ... apple should be liable.

I hope someone out there puts the pressure on Apple in this way. Messages going to the wrong person??? That is a serious problem.

I am having the same problem. Mine started when I upgraded to an XS Max. Wife and daughter have X everything worked fine until I upgraded.

Now my wife will not text me because of a fear that she won’t be able to text our daughter.

This is bad. Fix the problem Apple.

We did all have the same Apple ID.

Now I gave them separate Apple ID’s and still having the same problem.

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 have the same issue. After 5 hours of dealing with apple support and getting no help whatsoever (nobody even told me this was a known issue they kept saying i dont know thats weird...) verizon offered a solution. If you delete the contacts of the people that is getting messed up and delete all their messages it undoes the merging. I believe its only temporary but much better than any help i recieved from apple!

I just wasted two hours with Apple online and they pretended they didn’t know the issue so I screenshot this blog and he still play dumb. Now they do know there’s an issue as they try for me to use iTunes and go back os11 unfortunately it didn’t work bc my mac is already updated as well. So don’t buy when they tell you they don’t know it’s already on the news!!

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?