iOS 12 iMessage

I'm surprised you haven't run into other problems with sharing an Apple ID before now. We get a regular trickle of people running into such problems.

Apple makes it pretty clear that they don't intend that people share an ID(*). They probably don't test to see if changes they make to the system make things worse for those who do.

(*) from the Apple ID FAQ at https://appleid.apple.com/faq/#!&page=faq

Can I share an Apple ID with someone else?

Your Apple ID should not be shared with anyone else. It provides access to personal information including contacts, photos, device backups, and more. Sharing your Apple ID with someone else means you are giving them access to all your personal content and may lead to confusion over who actually owns the account. To share iTunes & App Store purchases, photos, a calendar, and more with someone else, try Family Sharing, iCloud Photo Sharing, or other easy-to-use sharing features.

Upgrading everything to iOS 12.1 has resolved the issues for my family.

Same problem and this is what I've uncovered by reading various message boards. One of the message updates for iOS12 was a new feature that combines Message threads by iCloud account instead of the actual phone number. For me, I have our entire family (myself, wife, and kids) under my iCloud/Apple ID. This has caused massive issues and frustrations since the upgrade in that all of our texts are trying to combine in a single thread and we have no idea who is sending the text or who is supposed to receive the text.

From what I can uncover, Apple claims this was to help simplify viewing your texts over multiple devices (e.g. iPhone, iPad, etc.). However, there was already a previous feature in Settings to simply forward a text to other devices so I don't understand why Apple would force out this new combining feature.

My personal viewpoint is that Apple is trying to force every individual user to set up their own Apple ID and then connect them through the new Family Sharing feature. What they do not understand is that I am extremely uncomfortable with setting up my young children with an individual account connected to Apple.

If this is not reversed, then I will most likely leave Apple all together and finally jump over to Android. I will not be forced by Apple to allow them to connect directly to my minor children. That is highly arrogant of Apple to think they have the right to directly connect to a minor.

You can’t totally be in tune with 100% of your users, ever. However, it seems Apple was in tune enough to come up with Family Sharing.

Apple does not recommend sharing Apple ID’s, and doesn’t test for this scenario, hence your situation is an abnormal practice.

I am experiencing this issue as well with my family. This is happening on my iPhone X and as of the 12.1 beta update it is now also happening on my iPad Pro but not on the 5 other devices which all share the same Apple ID (for years).

I have opened up a support case with Apple on this, and they appeared to not be aware of this software bug, and wanted me to do a full reset to factory settings on my phone to fix it. However, this morning after taking 12.1 Beta on my iPad Pro it confirms its not my phone but a software bug. Its possible this is intentional and $$$ motivated...

Can you explain a little more about how and when the grouping appears?

Also, when you say the five device are "linked to one apple account," do you mean one Family Account with a separate Apple ID for each of you, or are you trying to share one Apple ID?

We are using one Apple ID, mine. Prior to ios12, I would receive separate messages from each one of my family members.

Since ios12, they all go in to the same string...and I can only reply to the most recent family member that texted me.

All my other messages are not impacted...just the ones for my immediate family that are set up in their iPhone X’s w/ my Apple ID.

That is the exact issue I am having. It’s my wife & two teenagers using my Apple ID so I don’t see why that is an issue.

My concern is...if we create separate Apple ID’s for everyone....then I family share w/ them...will they each lose access to everything they’ve downloaded on their individual devices while using my ID? We have Apple Music and my kids have each set up multiple playlists & downloaded a ton of songs...I don’t want them losing anything!

Shortto wrote:

My concern is...if we create separate Apple ID’s for everyone....then I family share w/ them...will they each lose access to everything they’ve downloaded on their individual devices while using my ID? We have Apple Music and my kids have each set up multiple playlists & downloaded a ton of songs...I don’t want them losing anything!

So long as you use your Apple ID as the "family organizer," everybody should have access to music purchased through the iTunes Store and apps purchased through the App Store with that account (as well as any music and most apps anybody in the family group purchases).

Unfortunately, I'm not sure the situation is as clear with Apple Music. The documentation mentions sharing music and playlists, but I'm not sure how existing downloads will be treated.

So I went thru the hassle of creating an ID for my wife and son; texts are still coming thru on the same string. This did not fix the issue. What else needs to be done?

And yes...they lost all of their downloads in Apple Music.

Same issue for us. I have 3 young kids, and no way do I want them having their own Apple IDs. This is so frustrating!!! All the imessages go to the kids sometimes, my wife sometimes, with no rhyme or reason. This is a terrible feature. How do I resolve this?

Same exact issue here. Had 5 devices on 1 iCloud user id for 10 years - and been having this issue where I text my son and the name changes to my wife and vice versa. I went thorough the hassle of creating 4 individual iCloud accounts, did the family sharing stuff, and it's STILL happening. No change whatsoever.