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 am going to try to log out of imessage with the current Apple ID (Settings --> Messaging --> Send&Receive) then do the same with all the other devices, leave only the phone number, and see if the issue goes away. If that works, maybe the remnants of the old imessage setting caused the issue, since they may have retained the same apple id in messaging? I wonder if this carries over even if imessage was turned off, which it was before.

Worth a try.

Good luck... Just to reiterate one settings change that has worked thus far for us (4 or 5 days now) - in "Send & Receive" select "start new conversation from" - and pick the email associated with the AppleID for that phone. For receive, choose both the AppleID and the phone #. You indicated you are on separate AppleIDs, so maybe this will help if its not your current settings across all phones. We have 4 on the same AppleID, and now only one phone with that setting (all others just send/receive from # associated with SIM card for that phone) and it appears to have worked after also deleting all old individual and group threads. This was the advice given when I called Apple late last week - to make sure "start new conversation from" was the email associated with the AppleID.

I completely agree. The preaching about Apple IDs is just irritating and irrelevant. There was no problem before iOS 12. We have now separated Apple IDs and done all the same things that have been suggested in the previous threads and it still doesn’t work. The threads are still merging together even under different IDs. We had to switch to WhatsApp so our family could communicate. This is extremely frustrating!

agree agree agree! We’ve taken every single recommended fix and still no fix. Ive told our younger daughter absolutely positively do NOT update to iOS 12. She’s the only one I can communicate with easily right now. individual Apple ids clearly not the solution. Get with it Apple. This has been going on long enough since the update.

sjvivian wrote:

Good luck... Just to reiterate one settings change that has worked thus far for us (4 or 5 days now) - in "Send & Receive" select "start new conversation from" - and pick the email associated with the AppleID for that phone. For receive, choose both the AppleID and the phone #. You indicated you are on separate AppleIDs, so maybe this will help if its not your current settings across all phones. We have 4 on the same AppleID, and now only one phone with that setting (all others just send/receive from # associated with SIM card for that phone) and it appears to have worked after also deleting all old individual and group threads. This was the advice given when I called Apple late last week - to make sure "start new conversation from" was the email associated with the AppleID.

I've tried about every suggestion on the board, and this has been the first that's worked....been about 6 hours now.

Yup. Same problem. It only happens with messages from me to my wife and daughter and not in their messages to me or to each other.

Apple really needs to fix this or I will at least have to stop using iMessage with my wife and daughter.

My daughter experienced this issue after upgrading to iOS 12 as well.

All of her messages to my Wife's phone number were getting sent to my phone number.

(Note we don't use our apple id e-mail for iMessage, only the specific phone number for the device to avoid just these kinds of mix ups.)

I was able to fix it by deleting the iMessage conversation thread both from my phone and my daughters phone.

Since then new individual messages to each phone have worked ok.. Good luck!

I have the same person in my contacts twice as it is a personal number and a work number and I want to keep them separate. The contacts share only a last name - everything else is different. On my iPhone X, it has combined both message strings and I cannot initiate a conversation with the other number, it has to be initiated by my contact to text the other number. This is only happening on my iPhone X, my computer imessage is able to keep the two contacts separate.

So we bit the bullet and separated our Apple IDs. Deleted all messages on all devices across family members. Any text that had any family member was deleted.

I would say things were pretty good for about a week and then randomly a few texts were mixed up and went to the wrong person.

And then today my wife received notification of new texts. She looked and nada. Scrolled down about 30 messages and there were the new ones, way down in the list, not at the top as is normal.

Whatever Apple wants to say about unique IDs is fine. They still didn’t execute well on this in terms of communication to their users nor at a technical level. There are still problems.

Not looking for a reply. Just adding to the volume of discontent.

On the phone with support now and being given the “tough luck - Apple IDs are intended to only be used for one individual each” message.

Not cool at all. I’m asking for a link to policy stating such, or that this behavior is currently working as designed.

Forcing us to separate Apple IDs for our children sounds unreasonable.

Rep insisting that this has never been supported and is not to be fixed. That he has nonidea where anyone would have heard that it would be addressed.

I guess we have all just been lucky in the past that messaging ever worked. 😑

May be time to start social media blasts on this.

Truly baffling...I have called 2x on this issue to Apple in the last 2 weeks, both times they have acknowledged they are aware of the issue, 2nd time said they are working on it and expect future releases (of iOS one would assume) will indeed fix it, whether on same AppleID or not (as long as settings on phones / devices are set up correctly). Again, this came straight from someone in support, so no need to post a bunch of "Apple has never supported shared IDs..." posts, there's plenty in here already. I'm just relaying what someone from Apple support told me when asked the question directly. Others have heard differently.

Honestly, it sounds as if you're getting a boilerplate response. Along with a little exaggeration on the part of the support rep. It is unlikely that they know what "future releases" are going to be doing. What I'm saying is don't assume that what you were told by first level support means that changes are going to happens.

I'm starting to agree with the social media blasts. Different people are getting different responses from support. So who is communicating what to their support people? And they are failing to address the issue happening with people who are not sharing apple id's or the privacy and safety issues. My kids' phones are set up to send and receive form their gmail emails or their phone numbers and we are all getting merged. As I told Apple (multiple times) I have a suicidal teenager - this is a HUGE safety issue for us! The bottom line is they do not care - I have received zero responses from them, even though I have contacted multiple departments and people. Their complete lack of caring and horrible customer service is pushing me closer and closer to moving to android.

Possible fix?

Apologies if someone's already pointed this out, but I wanted to pop back into the thread to update on a fix that, for now, seems to be working.

Recap:

1. I have six family phones on my account, each logged in under its own unique Apple ID for quite some time before IOS 12 and the cross-texting issue. The "get your own Apple ID" suggestion was not a solution for me.

2. Only three of the six lines in the family were having an issue.

3. We discovered that, despite the affected three phones displaying a unique Apple ID (Settings>>select Apple ID under the picture on the first screen), when looking at the "Send & Receive" screen in the iMessages app (the screen that allows you to select the phone numbers used by the phone), the three impacted phones were all still displaying the same primary Apple ID (the one on my phone from back in the pre-Family Sharing days when we all shared one Apple ID).

4. The other three non-affected family phones correctly displayed the user's unique Apple ID inside the iMessage app.

5. From the iMessages setting, we logged out the two affected phone and re-logged them in under their correct Apple ID.

6. The problem seems to have resolved itself for now.

So, even if you switch your phones to unique Apple IDs (or already had them set that way before IOS 12), try double-checking:

Settings>>iMessage>>Send & Receive. Make each phone is in fact on its individual Apple ID inside the Messaging app.

Hope this helps.

p.s. When we switched to unique Apple IDs some time ago, none of us individually set the iMessage "Send & Receive" screen. For some reason, two of the six phones didn't switch over (mine never changed as it was the original primary/shared Apple ID).