Merging iMessage Conversations in iOS 12

This is a completely unhelpful reply. This issue started with IOS12 and should be resolved as a very high priority bug fix. The poster is technically correct. But there maybe very legitimate reasons why people such as in our family are using the same apple ID and have been for MANY years. Let’s solve the issue please Apple.

I may have found a temporary workaround for this. At least it has not gotten merged back since I’ve done this. This is NOT a permanent fix but merely a band-aid that seems to be working in my situation.

My son’s phone/contact that keeps merging with my wife’s (for whom I also created a new Apple ID), the last time it merged, I deleted the thread as usual, but this time I am now only texting him back at his new iCloud email address as opposed to his phone number. Rather, it’s an iMessage, since you can use iMessages to text other iPhone users via the phone number OR an email address. So far, no merging of the threads has occurred yet on either my wife’s nor on my iPhone. It’s still not a perfect solution to the issue, but I’m not losing my mind now where I have to delete the thread every day. Apple still needs to fix this. It’s not a feature, it’s a bug.

Yes, keeping my fingers crossed this Apple “improvement” is removed in the next update, or at least we’re given the choice if we want our messages to be merged or not. I don’t want my little kids having their own Apple ID’s. Apple should understand our situations.

I realize this is different than the original posted problem. We’re having almost exactly the same scenario as you are stevedore761 and went thru almost the same hoops today, both in the Apple store and for hours on the phone. Finally the supervisor I was speaking with found out from her superior that there’s an “iMessage server issue” and they are aware and working on it. She said they also suggested that a possible workaround is to delete all threads including the affected people (we all have our own Apple ids as of today). I may also try deleting emails from their send and receive tab as suggested. However she said honestly until they fix the problem they can’t guarantee anything will work. They also suggested we just keep getting the updates until the fix is added. Very frustrating, but we’ve decided for now to just send our daughters a group text addressing them by name when we need to text them. Crazy, but at least that works and we can be assured the intended recipient is seeing the text and tell which one is texting us back!

Not entirely true, William. I agree that they are designed that way today, but for us true early adopters - Apple had not designed it that way. Many people locked into a single one as a family many years (12+) back. I've had several conversations with Apple support regarding this over the years, and each one had a common thread of 'that's fine, we understand that you go way back, no need to move to individual AppleIDs'. There is a lot of banter across support threads, some of it disrespectful, assigning blame and painting as 'stupid' people who have a family under one AppleID. Not saying your post was in that vain, rather, just wanted to share a bit more context for the true origination of the single AppleID from many years back. I agree that having a single ID for each person is the best way forward - and I'm sure the majority of families in this situation would agree. However, the not small population of families who are in this situation (Single ID) are frustrated as Apple has been silent/passive on pushing people to move away from that situation and has gone so far as to not break support 'family' functionality of multiple devices under one Apple ID. Until now, it seems.

I downloaded and installed iOS 12.1 this morning and it fixed the message merge for me. It even separated out those threads that had got merged together. I didn’t have to delete any messages to get it to work.

Per usual, the only answer I have for you is:

Feedback - iPhone - Apple

I have exact same issue Stevedore761

Delete any text or group texts that contain the people that are associated with your appleid. If you your wife and any kids share your apple id, delete those individual & group texts.

from each phone sharing the appleid.

I did this and it worked for a while but within an hour different contacts (but same Apple ID) were merged again.

No, even if a message originates from the same AppleID, iOS Messages will treat messages that come from different "from" addresses as disparate message threads as it bases them on the "from" address.

It’s doing it to me also and all in our family have separate Apple IDs

Again, doing it to me also even with separate Apple IDs for all of us.