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

backdoc01 wrote:

As I am waiting for my iOS 11.4.1 ipsw to download and instal, is everyone on AT&T who has this problem or does this cross all carriers?

It is not a "problem". It is behaving EXACTLY as it was designed to do. The problem is sharing IDs. Don't do that. Why is that so difficult for people to get through their skulls and into their gray matter?

Wesley Walls wrote:

Incorrect. It worked PERFECTLY FINE FOR YEARS, and it worked as advertised until iOS 12. This is a bug, and in no way, through any logic, should the phone be COMBINING texts from unique telephone numbers. Family Share is an option, not the correct solution to what is otherwise an operating error with this iOS release.

Tim is 100% correct. You've been ignoring Apple's design for years and you finally got bit. Apple has ALWAYS stated that an Apple ID identifies ONE person and to do otherwise is to invite problems. Kinda like multiple persons sharing the same Social Security number. They might not see problems for years but sooner or later they'll all get bit.

Possible workaround and/or solution.

Remove or change emails in notification section of your Apple ID account, so they don’t match another Apple ID.

I find it ridiculous there including the notification email as part of your iCloud iMessage account now. They should only look at the reachable at.

Look for apple ids of alternate emails in your contacts that are having the issue.

Check every email in the contacts with the issues on the Apple ID page to see if they also have an Apple ID.

Remove other non used emails in the contacts having the issue.

You might have to delete the merges thread in order to fix the issue. Not sure I want you lose years of memories by deleting the thread.

Rant and my issue.

Why this upsets me, is apple snuck this in in beta 8.

So they made a change to iMessage without telling anyone and sneaking in 1 to 2 weeks before going live. This is just a bad idea with no time for testing.

So this is happening to me and several of my accounts including my parents which are on a separate Apple ID.

My parents shared an Apple ID, I separated their phones into their own Apple ID it didn’t help. See fixes above.

On the phone with Apple tonight we discovered that my mother had an additional Apple ID created she didn’t use it but the email address was linked to her contact and the security Notification email was linked to another other Apple ID.

See fix above.

My family all six of us share one Apple ID and until I was 12 and it worked perfectly fine.

Now in order to fix my family I have to go on 12 devices and spend several hours changing and setting up Apple IDs that I’m giving to children under 12. Yes they have family sharing but this is been set up for years even before family sharing.

It’s extremely frustrating to not be able to message family members you’ve messages for years.

And guys it’s getting old age everyone should have their own Apple ID, well you know what it’s worked fine since iMessage was launched by simply checking or I’m checking email address it worked perfectly fine till this little change that was poorly implemented and poorly coaded st the last minute.

I have now lost years of messages from my father, actually years of memories from my father and the only way to fix it is to remove all the memories from my mother as well. I’m not ready to do that.

I hope some of the suggestions can fix this issue for some users.

Apple needs to fix this. They made a change at the last minute without proper testing it comes down to their fault

Yes cleaning up contacts can really help. It can point you to people that have multiple Apple IDs with the same person’s name or contacts that have emails but I know longer used or that are used in the same Apple ID.

@tinker6700 what he said was not quite how you portray it. iOS 12 overall has been a step change in function and performance. Like any x.0 release, a few problems emerged, and at least some have come as a nasty surprise for a few users. It appears that Apple tried to implement what should be an enhancement to messages by having messages synchronized across all devices owned by a user. This went wrong on two counts, because (a) they failed to take account of users sharing a single Apple ID, and (b) from the reports so far it appears that messages don’t always go consistently as intended to all the devices on a single ID. On point (b) that seems to be a bug. On point (a) the jury is still out on what went wrong and where it went wrong, but at least part of the blame has to be shared by ID-sharing users, but I have a feeling there is also a lot more to this which is keeping Apple R&D on overnight working.

OysterDePoyster wrote:

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).

Hi Oyster, There are two separate issues here. One is families that share Apple ID's and their texts merging and the other is people who don't share Apple ID's but message those that do.

For me, this issue has resolved itself (I did power down my phone just now to make sure the messages did not merge), and I'm happy to report they did not.

For families who share an Apple ID. What may be beneficial is to create new Apple ID's, delete every trace of any message between those members (even old group messages) and on any additional devices, such as ipads and macbooks, log out of imessage, shut down device, restart and then re-enable iMessage. (I have not tried this as I do not have this particular issue).

Best of luck!!!

I understand your situation, and I feel bad for those impacted by this.

However, I also understand what Apple might be trying to do here to unify a person's iMessages from varying points of contact. You say "it was working fine" and that's true, for you. For others who have certain situations as I've described above, perhaps it was "not fine" for them. Look, it's Apple's system and they can shape it how they want, like it or not. It has been said many times in this thread, and countless others over the past few years that sharing IDs is not supported (just because it worked doesn't mean it's supported).

This is the worst effect from sharing that I've seen, but I've seen other effects of sharing IDs over the years (this is hardly new, look for the several-hundred post thread about shared call history from a few years back). The response back then was the same, don't share IDs.

Laura02Beth wrote:

As seen multiple times in this forum, people have created new Apple IDs for each person but have reported that the messages are still being merged. The problem isn’t just that people are sharing IDs because even people who are not sharing IDs are having their messages merged.

But you don't know how they implemented this change though, do you? Getting an ID is just the first step, how you implement it has many variables. Some may simply sign out of iMessage and sign back in under the new ID. Is that the right way? Probably not. You likely have to back all the way out of the shared ID and start fresh by signing into the new ID everywhere, and waiting for the changes on the back-end to correct (which may very well take several hours, so the impatient person may report that it didn't work).

Then there's also the issue about contacts that were "tainted" by the shared ID, they'd probably have to be deleted and re-created. Did everyone do that? Then there's the iMessage threads which were "tainted" by this shared ID, those probably have to be deleted too, not just by the ones sharing the ID but perhaps even those on the receiving side. Did everyone do that?

As you see, there are many variable so just because it doesn't work for some doesn't mean it doesn't work. I do wish Apple would provide some guidance for all of you having this problem, maybe with enough complaints they'll provide some instructions on how to get out of this mess, but I think that whatever changes they implemented were intentional and here to stay (albeit, with some possible bugs upon launch).

sjvivian wrote:

...having them on your AppleID is the easiest way to do it.

Then you WILL have problems. Apple has NEVER supported ID sharing. By the way, there IS an easier way to do it.

Incidentally, Apple does not allow or disallow any specific activity. You own your iPhone and you can use it as you wish. However, when you choose not to follow Apple's instructions, don't expect your iPhone to work flawlessly.

An important clarification... Apple instructions specifically describe putting many devices on a single Apple ID (I have five). Apple does not support multiple PERSONS sharing an ID.

This is correct, I have myself and three others on family sharing with the same exact issue. All started with iOS 12. Any fix such as wiping the phones, separating the family, changing each Apple ID password, has failed. We even turned off iMessage for all family members, deleted the threads on each phone, and it worked for about an hour with separate SMS threads, then iOS consolidated the same people into one thread. We did have everyone on the same Apple ID in the past, but this was changed to each user having their own ID and added to family sharing, before iOS 12 was even in beta.

I don't believe this will be fixed by anything in iMessage, rather there is something that looks for old combined Apple ID associations and is consolidating those contacts, whether or not you are still associated or not. We need to be able to turn off the flag that associated those contacts in the past.

This is frustrating, and honestly preaching about proper use of Apple ID's in the past simply does not help solve the immediate problem, which is that a LOT of people are having problems using the product, and this situation needs to be addressed, not ignored due to policy that was never actually followed in the first place by quite of bit of the user base.

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.

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.

Go to settings>Messages> Scroll down to and select "Send & Receive >"

I am uncertain what all, if any, extra or unwanted options may possibly show up here as my device was only allowing iMessages to be sent/received from my phone number and apple ID, but it sounds as if this option will allow/disallow iMessages to be received on (possibly) more than one apple ID and or device at a time. It seems as if this option may only fix the issue of receiving messages from somebody else mistakenly, and not necessarily redirect sent messages to the intended receiver unless they in turn investigate and possibly deselect the ability to send/receive iMessages from more than one apple ID and/or phone number. As I personally only have an iPhone, I can safely select that iMessages only be sent/received from it via my phone number.

Seems like it has been fixed.

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

So much for that not supporting multiple users thing.

Yeah, well maybe. My guess is that many here like me did also go back to Apple directly and voice our frustration. What I know however is that Apple did recognize it as an "ISSUE". Thanks again to everyone who stayed positive and knew they were not crazy.

"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". Apple still gets it! Thanks Apple!
[Edited by Host]