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

Dude this problem just came up recently, so i'm just looking for a simple fix.

This is from Apple. IOS 12.1 Resolves an issue that caused messages to be merged into one thread when two users were signed in with the same Apple ID on multiple iPhones.

I have ALS and its important that the phone and MacBook, sync with one ID, that is my reality

There's no problem syncing multiple devices to the same Apple ID. The problem is syncing different people to the same Apple ID. I have 5 devices sharing my Apple ID, but they are all mine. My wife has 3 syncing to the same Apple ID, but it is her Apple ID, not mine. And we link them with Family Sharing, and thus share calendars and photos. But we also have content that is unique to each of our needs. And our texts never get confused.

Unfortunately for me what I really need is a shared "photo stream". What that does for me is, wife takes a picture, pic goes in photo stream, MacBook pro's photo stream sees picture, a "smart album" grabs picture and puts it in the photo library. Totally automatic. The new, "iMessage combine, merge into one thread issue, is going to force me to lose that essential set up, 100's of pics will have to be moved manually into a shared album on the iPhone and then on the MacBook moved out of shared album into photo library.

As an Apple shareholder i applaud the effort to have every user on their own ID, but as a consumer it's a set backwards for me.

I would love things to go back to pre IOS 12.

Copied from Apple support website, "IOS 12.1 Resolves an issue that caused messages to be merged into one thread when two users were signed in with the same Apple ID on multiple iPhones." What happened?

My husband and daughter’s contact is like sink together I cannot send one message or the other message if I try then my daughter gets my husband’s messages this is really messed up I just need fixed I just got my new phone

Add me to this list and add this issue to the list of nightmares with the the latest iOS and the Xs.

I am receiving notifications without texts, and yesterday was in the middle of a 3-way conversation when I suddenly did not receive one person's texts. Then, another person was added to the conversation (who had no clue what we were talking about and we had not added anyone), then one of the original people was 'removed from the conversation' by someone who was not part of the thread. To top it off, my replies then became a different conversational thread which randomly included several texts dating back to 2015. Even after deleting the corrupted thread, problems still continue with messages between us.

After weeks of Bluetooth disconnections and still no consistent wifi calling, this latest fiasco has me inches away dumping my Xs and considering Android. And I've used a Mac since the original desktop. Really, really frustrating and disappointing...

Thanks for the inapplicable condescension. Apparently you believe that it is as 'simple' as deleting conversations with my entire family, losing all related threads, quitting messages and restarting my phone. This is not a user issue; this is a hardware and software failure. Period. There are not multiple users or iPhones tied to a thread with a single i.d. I do not wish to delete years of conversations. I have restarted, rebooted, hard rebooted, quit messages, quit wifi calling, quit Bluetooth, repaired, renamed, reset network settings, called my service provider, called Apple techs etcetera and ad nauseam. I have read this thread, and the many others pertaining to Bluetooth connectivity, wifi calling and innumerable iOS12 and iPhone Xs issues and the varied 'solutions' from other community members and Apple 'support.' Your sarcasm is very helpful; just like Apple support. iOS 12 and the Xs are dismal, bug-filled products. Pretending otherwise is not helpful, and offensive.

One of my contacts is crossed. The contact works sometimes but sometimes that contact will not deliver messages. It appears I had the contact in with an overseas prefix and now it is crossed with the regular contact. All efforts to delete it fail.

Extremely glad I found this thread. I was driving myself crazy. We have this happening on my wife's phone. We are a family with many Apple devices. For individual's phones, we have separate Apple ID's. However, for iMessage on Macs, iPads, and iPods, they are signed in under one Apple ID that then has about 6 aliases/sub accounts (forget the terminology Apple uses) to differentiate each device. In the past, this worked flawlessly and correctly. However, now when any one of the devices messages my wife's phone, it creates the scenario others are describing. The messages all come through in one thread and the displayed contact changes to whichever the last message came from. I spent an hour or two checking that each device only had the check mark by its correct account, all had iCloud syncing for messaging turned off, and all were correctly listed in the contacts. Even after signing out of the Apple ID on all, deleting all contacts and re-adding, the problem still happens. Really hoping there's a fix for this soon as it has completely broken my system. And if this was an intended feature as some have pointed out, there should be a toggle or way to not use it.

It is now January 3rd 2019!! Time to get it together Apple, and I am asking nicely. I have been dealing with this situation since your update of iOS 12 and now it’s iOS 12.1.2 I’m not really sure what’s been changed but this hasn’t, and a lot of people are very unhappy that they cannot use their phones the way they used to and that’s not right. A lot of us have tons of information saved that we absolutely cannot lose and that needs to be considered. I am on a completely different Apple ID than my child and messages between me and his father are going to his account which is completely uncalled for and personal and should never happen to anyone. These kind of problems never happened before. There is nothing but constant problems happening and it’s tiring honestly, but this one is huge for me. I cannot understand either why something like this hasn’t even been resolved yet, and if it isn’t I’ll be happy to move to somewhere else with less headaches. I’m beginning to wonder if Apple reads these.

I know this is from 12/15, but I just happened on this thread a day or two ago. I've read through all of it in hopes of finding a solution to this really frustrating problem. As you seem like a "power" user I respect your comments, but I believe this statement is incorrect and there is a problem with the scenario you describe.

I myself have had multiple products of every device Apple makes for the last 15 years and know the ins and outs of Apple ID use very well. Before iOS '12 I had a system where we could have non-unique user devices, i.e. a shared family iMac, a shared family iPad, an iPod hooked up to a shared sound system, etc... all sign in under one Apple ID and then each have an individual alias. So for instance, my iPhone signs in under Apple ID 1, my wife's iPhone signs in under Apple ID 2, the family iMac signs in under Apple ID 3 and then the family iPad signs in under Apple ID 3. For Apple ID 3, those devices that use it then have a unique alias so that that the iMac is Apple ID 3-Alias 1 and the iPad is Apple ID3-Alias 2. In this way, everything could individually message and communicate while being managed by a shared Apple ID successfully. This seems to be a similar setup to what you describe in your post.

For weeks now, that system has changed needlessly so that messages sent from Apple ID 3-Alias 1 and Apple ID 3-Alias 2 come through to my wife's phone, Apple ID 2, in the same thread as if they are the same user. However, the contact name and picture changes to be from whichever message is most recent. This is not a desired or expected behavior in any way.

After reading every post in this thread in an attempt to solve this, I think there is a big communication issue in referring to Apple ID's in general when they come in two variations. I believe that some people on here are referring to a main Apple ID and some are referring to sub accounts or aliases under a main Apple ID. Not to mention the fact that your Apple ID could be one thing for iCloud backups, another for the iTunes store, another for iMessage, etc...

Let's say we're exclusively talking about the Apple ID's for iMessage as that is what this problem is referring to. The posts saying "don't share an Apple ID, change that to solve the problem, doing that is wrong" would be correct in that you should not simply share one main Apple ID between different devices for different users in regards to iMessage. However, there is the scenario where you create an Apple ID, say it's called ID 1, and then sub accounts under that ID, say they're called Sub 1, Sub 2, and Sub 3. Let's then say you have a Macbook the family shares, an iPhone exclusive to one user, and an iPad that the family shares. I have this basic scenario myself and was told over the course of a few years by Apple reps in person and through phone support that having them all sign in with ID 1, then having each individually use the sub accounts so that Macbook = ID1 Sub 1, iPhone = ID 1 Sub 2, and iPad = ID 1 Sub 3 for iMessage is appropriate and will be successful. Side note - This is my setup for iMessage; all use different ID's for iCloud backups.

This has been the case until iOS 12. So, before I would get a separate iMessage text thread between each device. Now they come through randomly under the same thread. I would additionally argue that this is in fact an Apple bug rather than expected behavior based on incorrect user use of Apple ID's because there is no consistency. ID 1 Sub 1 and ID 1 Sub 2 devices could both send messages to someone and come in overlapped in one thread, while ID 1 Sub 3 sends one that comes in separately. And the messages coming through in one thread, the contact showing, or otherwise is seemingly random rather than consistent.

If Apple wants to discontinue support for the feature of having sub ID's under an Apple ID, then that is their choice. However, as it is still supported and a viable feature, this should not be happening.

Apple has never supported sub IDs under an Apple ID, so they haven't discontinued anything. That is your invention. Probably 99.9% of all Apple user use the same Apple ID for everything. A few may have used a common Apple ID for the iTunes & App Store to share purchases, but even that became unnecessary after Family Sharing was introduced 5 years ago. But there also was no real harm in continuing it.

Sor of reminds me of the IBM 1401 computer, which users discovered had some assembly language operations that were undocumented, but were useful. When IBM discontinued the 1401 they accommodated programs written for it in an emulator on the 360, but the emulation did not include those undocumented instructions, which broke a lot of stuff. But the programmers had to rewrite their code anyway.

It's my invention? It's been on every Apple device I've used for years, was first suggested by an Apple store employee, and then more recently supported by Apple phone tech support 3 days ago. It currently is in place on the 19 Apple Devices I personally own as well as the 54 employee iPads I provide tech configuration and repair to. I would consider that a supported feature. This isn't some hidden, undocumented script written into an assembly language. I believe it's in part what's become a contributing factor to both miscommunication and a flaw in the current iOS. I was trying to see if I could help intelligently sort out anything about this issue. I thought you seemed like a user who may be able to be helpful, but hearing your made up statistics of "99.9% of all Apple user", condescension, and reference to old IBM technology that has no bearing or help in the current situation I don't think you have any value in the conversation.

Your continued condescension is ill-placed, belies your ignorance and helps no one. No, this text issue is not 'entirely due to sharing Apple i.d.'s,' which you would know if you read the comments and actually cared to help think of a solution. Yes, Apple does not 'officially' monitor these conversations but most of the participants have tired of calling text support and receiving no solution so they turn to this community.

This texting/contacts problem is only one example of the failures of iOS12 and more particularly the Xs product line. Why don't you google, Xs and wifi calling, or Xs and bluetooth devices, or Xs and speaker qualities, or Xs and volume issues? Just those few will trigger 200 million results. Why do you think that Apple is missing its financial projections? Trade tariffs? Chinese economy? Pricing? Currency exchange? Yes, all of those play a role, but the most basic issue confronting Apple's iPhone is that iOS12 was rife with issues as yet unaddressed and the Xs is the most overpriced and bug-filled product Apple has released in decades. Period. I have been using Apple products since 1984. The xS is an embarrassment. Climb off your pontificating mountaintop, lose the sardonicism, and use your synapses to help people not criticize them.

Same exact issue I’m experiencing. Incredibly frustrating. Messages between my mom and dad suddenly one of them disappears. The other day they both were separate again. Could have been because I was switching phones doing an iCloud restore, but there they were. Now gone again. This is insane!!!