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

Folks

For those of you feel as if the issue has been resolved, have you tried this experiment:

Send a sample text to members in your family with whom you share an Apple ID

Ensure that they each log separately under the “Messages” app

Power down your phone

Power up your phone

Go back to the Messages app. See if all people with a shared Apple ID had their messages combined (hopefully not).

After waiting well over a week for Apple to do something regarding this disaster of a merged thread situation, and needing to communicate independently with my husband and kids, I solved the issue by downloading another messaging app and using it for family members. The "WhatsApp" app has solved this issue and we are enjoying the new messaging platform without any issues as it only uses your phone number. I believe each family member would need their own phone number for this to work, so families with younger children who do not yet have their own phone number would need to find another app that would perhaps use email addresses instead.

cmce01, for better or worse, this has turned into an ideologically war of responses in this thread. Apple does indeed not recommend sharing (and never has, though you can buy and sign in as many simultaneous iPhones as you'd like...), it can mess up a lot of stuff (contacts, FaceTime, content, etc.), and with this release it has messed up iMessage. That said, after some adjustments to settings and upgrading to iOS 12.0.1, our family's iMessage (which shares IDs across a number of phones) works fine again. Hopefully yours will too. I would like to say thanks to whoever the moderator is for this group (maybe its a bot - thank you bot) for removing the flame threads - including the one that questioned my parenting the last time I posted about why I've kept this sharing ID set up this way. If you keep doing it this way (sharing IDs), its clear you will have issues that people who don't share IDs won't have. To the poster whose child is struggling with behavioral health concerns - the easiest thing to do is to move to WhatsApp or another messaging app for your family so you can communicate with your child - way faster and less complicated than purging AppleIDs, setting up new ones, etc. Having lived through similar challenges with a teen, I appreciate how much stress this is likely causing your family...good luck. Whether its supported or not...don't let Apple's lack of responsiveness to your issue challenge your ability to communicate with your children. And I wouldn't expect them to respond...

PattiinCA wrote:

My son-in-law is sharing with his daughter who is a child.

Then they have to stop and both of their phones have to follow the procedure I gave above.

It doesn't matter WHY they did it. It was NEVER supported by Apple.

Yes, I've been having this issue as well. I called Apple support and they claim that we are not using it as intended.

My mom has her own Apple ID under my family sharing. On my phone it is combining messages that I am trying to send to her iPhone and her iPad. Same is true if I'm trying to message her from my ipad to either her iPad or iPhone. What is the point of the Send & Receive feature if it doesn't work??

Apple's solution was to turn off iMessage on the phones but leave it enabled on the iPads and then create two separate contacts to message. Well, we prefer to continue doing it how we've been doing it AND be able to use iMessage.

I have 1 Apple ID, 1 iPhone, 1 MacBook pro, for years, my wife uses the iPhone only, her phone is set to only use her phone number to send and receive messages, I message with the MacBook pro only, set to send and receive with the Apple ID.

For years anyone my wife messaged with saw her as Mrs X and maintained 1 thread {conversation }, and anyone I messaged with saw me as Mr D, and maintained 1 thread {conversation }, yes I know the phone number is associated with the Apple ID. And please don't just tell me to get another ID, I need pics from that iPhone to sync with my MacBook. This issue is a real nightmare for the people that are trying to contact us, my kids can't get mom sometimes and can't get dad sometimes. They only see one thread, with a combined message history of both Mrs X and Mr D. And they are linked to whoever they were last messaging with. There is no issue on our end, Nothing is merged.

They claimed to have fixed it with IOS 12.1 update

*****

Help

[Edited by Host]

The entire problem is sharing an Apple ID. Apple always recommended against sharing, but doing so did not have serious consequences in the past. But as Apple has added features that are Apple ID-centric additional consequences to sharing have occurred. The one that has caused this issue is the fact that messages are now mirrored on all devices that share an Apple ID as part of the Continuity features. This is a great convenience if you share an Apple ID among devices that you use, but causes nothing but trouble if you share among devices used by multiple people. There are other consequences to sharing, such as overlapping contacts, browsing histories, calendar appointments, photos, reminders, documents, etc. Apple anticipated this and created Family Sharing, which provides most of the benefits of sharing Apple IDs with none of the consequences. Here's Apple's FAQ-->https://appleid.apple.com/faq/#!&page=faq note in particular the 4th item.

I just stumbled into this nightmare resulting from the new “united thread functionality” which came with IOS 12. I don’t share an apple id with anyone, but discovered that my daughter shares hers with her minor daughter...I used to text frequently with my daughter but hadn’t texted with my granddaughter since before IOS 12. The first time I did a few days ago, found that their texts had now been merged into one thread, which I have tried every avenue to undo..including deleting threads, going into various options like deleting contacts, toggle on and off imessage, going to an online chat with apple support who was aware of problem but unable to help me unless I got them to unshare. I then discovered that the same thing can happen if you try to text anyone who has a shared id (i.e. lots of couples) and there is no way of knowing in advance that they have a shared ID and this will happen. I have sent a suggestion to Apple that they give us the option to turn this off since we have no way to control it if the recipients, unknown to us, have a shared account .

Alexis62103 wrote:

Is this for everybody? No, definitely not. Will people tell me that I'm setting myself up for problems. Sure, and that's fine. I've done this for about 6ish years successfully. The only time I had an issue was when I first posted a message on this board and followed the thread. In one update a few months back, things started getting crossed and duplicated. I thought my system was done for, but simply signing out and back into all of the Apple ID's and rechecking the correct device's aliases had it all back to normal.

Sounds as if you're making a lot more work for yourself than just setting up Family Sharing.

Alexis62103...thank you very much for the detailed way you have devised a work-around; the apple tech support person I was working with tried a variety of methods like this, but she was doing it on my end...not the recipients end which is part of the massive problem that IOS12 has created. I think your method may be helpful for other families with children. In my case, I am going to try to get my daughter to set up a separate id for my granddaughter...I will have to convince her that they will be able to remember the new id and password (I did see on family sharing that the parent account address is the backup if the child can't access...anyone who has to deal with multiple ids and passwords knows that having to also remember new ones for this arrangement can feel the pain.) She is traveling right now and I was supposed to be able to text my granddaughter about school pickups etc so this "bug" really bothers me.

I also appreciate your trying to give another "family" user some helpful advice...somehow, I think some of the comments about just "live with it" come from people that don't have minor children or less competent people on the other end. The most frustrating part for me is that there is nothing that I can do from my end.

Alexis62103 wrote:

I see your point and it’s valid. However tedious my explanation was for clarity, it’s actually no work at all. The system that I work with came along gradually over years as my devices grew and it’s a few minutes of setup for each added device that would be the same basic time as family sharing. For 6+ years with an issue 1 time after an update that I worked through I’m happy with it and feel it’s viable for others depending on their personal situation. Definitely not for everyone.

I suspect, that as time goes, on, you're going to have to fiddle with it more and more.

And if they were using the same Apple ID, it will happen.

Thank you so much for sharing. This worked to resolve my issue. I had to delete the text that was combing and start again with a new text for each person

darrinofmaplewood wrote:

They are a mother and son who have shared an apple id since they've had them.

They are causing your problem. Apple can not "fix" it.

Perhaps Wesley meant turning off iCloud Drive, in the past that has been one of the workarounds to avoid things like merged call history with shared IDs.