ios 12 imessage streamlining

I’v been working with apple. 6 hours on the phone so far. They just uploaded diagnostics from my phone and iTunes on my computer. Apparently an engineer at apple is trying to figure this out. Hopefully I will hear something today. I will reply what they come up with. Basically our family can’t text each other. I text my wife and it immediately goes to my daughter. We all have a similar problem with who we can and can not text in our family of 4.

We created separate AppleIDs for each of our 4 iPhone users, but then still had to delete all message threads that involved any of us (on every device). Once we did that, the problem was solved. Turned on Family Sharing, but honestly at this point having access to my kids' music library is not necessary or appealing. I have older children (20 and 17) so monitoring their every purchase is not practical. I agree that creating unique AppleIDs should not be required and hopefully Apple will come up with a solution. We used Facebook Messenger for about a day until we learned about the "deleting the infected" thread solution. Now we're back to iMessage again and it's working fine.

i created sub accounts and separated everyone . . . . deleted the text string and started over. It's still happening to one person who I have checked every setting i know and they have their own itunes now.

This is a terrible problem. I have 4 family members (myself and three kids) on a single icloud account. My wife has a separate icloud account. After upgrading their phones to iOS12, my wife started reporting that the wrong messages were going to the wrong kids. I had not updated my phone yet (work phone) so I seemed unaffected. Did the usual; make sure only configured to send/receive from their respective phone numbers, signed out of icloud. I even created separate icloud accounts for all the kids but it still threads messages or sends them to the wrong phone. All phones do use the same account for iTunes purchases, perhaps this is an issue. After creating new icloud accounts for everyone I deleted all messages from all family members to each other - individual and group - from everyone's phone. Issue persists. I have even seen the header of a text message switch names from "Kid A" to "Kid B" as I watched. Apple needs to fix this problem. There is no justifiable explanation for it to work this way intentionally.

(solution of separate IDs did not work for me and my family)

NO! NOT SOLVED!! I have this same issue. When I text my daughter, she even gets the message from herself sometimes. Can't text my wife at all. They all go to my daughter. We share the same Apple ID for a reason and we are not going to delete a decade worth of texts. Please help Apple! You are the most powerful company in the world. This simply does not make any sense.

I downloaded iOS 12 when it was first available in September. For a week, I had the same frustrating problem with myself and my teenage daughter. Our iMessage threads were merged into one under my Apple ID with my Apple ID icon. So everything I had texted to myself was showing up in that conversation. It was extremely annoying and I thought about setting up family sharing with an Apple ID for my daughter, but she did not want to do that because she did not want to lose her data with her apps. So, after many different ways to try to solve this including generating a new text message & typing her contact name in, which would show her in the contact and then as soon as I sent the message it would merge it again, I found a solution. I started a new text message & typed in her phone number with the area code, and ever since then, I was able to retrieve her thread by itself with all of our pre-existing iMessages intact. Now I can go to iMessages and click on her thread as usual, and it will only sent it to her phone.

Today I called Apple Support to get help with this problem. After running me through all of the stuff we have already tried and finding no solution, I got bumped up to a higher level of support. This guy was just plain rude. He wanted to argue with me over whether this was a "known issue" or not rather than help solve the problem. Then he logged into my phone and directed me through nearly the identical steps as the previous support tech. When none of that worked again he told me that all iPhone users must now have separate Apple IDs. When I told him that I did not want my minor child to have her own Apple ID for supervision purposes, he hung up on me! This was no accident because I had given him my call back number in case we were disconnected. He never called back. Apple is running and hiding from this problem. Samsung is looking more and more attractive.

Your experience sounds much like mine. Years ago, after an update, the music library on my phone was totally whack (yep, that's the technical term). I got elevated and escalated through the support system, but no tech was able to resolve the problem, and no-one ever called me back despite their assurances that they would do so. Each tech took me thru steps that I had navigated on my own, and each tech seemed less patient than the previous. Somehow, it seemed, I was to blame for Apple's poorly designed and inadequately tested upgrade. I've used Apple products for many years, but don't understand why 'upgrades' are so often accompanied by problems.

The current snafu with texts going to the wrong family members is intolerable. All was fine until I upgraded. Now all is no longer fine. What the heck?

This is still happening to me. All four of us have different Apple IDs, using family sharing. It is also sending them to my sister mistakenly, who has a different Apple ID, different phone carrier, lives in a different state, and is not family sharing. Deleting the thread temporarily fixes the issue, but it comes back. I am tired of everyone saying it is just because people are sharing an Apple ID. WE ARE NOT SHARING AN APPLE ID. Still happens to us, clearly a bug.

Go to appleid.apple.com and get a new AppleID for each additional person sharing your AppleID. Then have each person sign out of the shared AppleID used just for Messaging and then sign in with their new AppleID. It doesn't change the AppleID associated with each device or iTunes or AppStore--only for the Messaging app. There's no need to set up Family Sharing and it isn't possible unless at least one device is signed into a new AppleID. Problem solved.

I logged into appleid.apple.com from a Mac to create an AppleID for my wife including all the personal, security, and credit card info. When you set it up using the web app, it doesn't change any settings in your iPhone or iPad (or on your Mac). On my wife's iPhone, I went into Settings/Messaging/Send&Receive. It will show the current AppleID being used. Touch the > and it shows the current AppleID on the top line. Tap it, and a box pops up: Tap "Sign Out". Then type the new AppleID on the top line with its password on the second line, then touch "Sign in". That's it after it all syncs up in a minute or two. After making the change our iMessages were completely separated on both sending and receiving. And nothing else was changed on her iPhone. It's still using my AppleID and all the apps and shared iCloud data are still there like before.

As a bonus, my wife and I were now able to use Messaging on our iPads without getting each other's messages. It works really well: everything is synced between my iPhone and iPad and I can alternate devices on a single thread without losing anything.

Our adult daughter who has always had her own AppleID notified me of the problem when she upgraded to iOS12: my wife's and my iMessages were combined in a single thread which also made it impossible for her to send iMessages to us individually. Once we made the iMessaging change on my wife's iPhone and iPad, it fixed all the problems on our daughter's devices. She didn't have to make any changes on her end. So this "fix" solves that problem.

I know that there are many reports of iMessages just being re-routed incorrectly in situations where there is no sharing of AppleIDs. I think that's just an iOS 12 bug and not something that can be fixed by changing settings like this.

It was not acceptable to my wife and I to switch to Family Sharing because we enjoy sharing common calendars, contacts, reminders, and notes which becomes very difficult or impossible to do. We don't have secrets after more than 50 years together <g>.

Same problem here since iOS 12 Beta. Went back to 11 and just waited for general release of 12 figuring this would be solved along with the horrid FaceTime camera switch delay. I'm kicking myself for not backing up my phone when I was on 11 and upgraded to general release 12. Same thing happened and the Apple tech told me the same thing as everyone was told "gotta have your own AppleID". Well, guess what? I changed my wife and my son to have their own ID and still same problem. It's not an Apple ID issue, it's an iOS 12 issue. One tech actually tried to tell me that my iPhone X was broken...really? My wife and son are having same issues and I told her I guess all 3 devices must be broken then. Funny that works just the way it's suppose to on my Macbook.

Today I was told by the tech that this is a "known issue" and that they're working on a fix and that 12.0.1 update didn't address this nor the FaceTime issue. I guess I will be using Whatsapp to text for now between my an my wife and son.

Forgot to add, when we changed Apple ID's it worked for a few days and then back to the problem. Then I deleted message threads from both my son and wife and it worked again...for a few days. Then Tech had me delete contacts and create them again, fixed again for a few days and same problem comes back. For those that change Apple ID and it starts working (I hope it fixes it for you) I wouldn't get my hopes up. Also if Apple has you delete message threads, and contacts, it will work again but fail again. They asked me to restore my phone, I refused because it's too time consuming and I didn't want to deal with setting up all my financial apps with FaceID all over again, etc, etc.

It's been over a week since we changed AppleIDs in the Messaging app [and nowhere else] and all is still good. No problems whatsoever sending or receiving on both iPhone 7's and XS's all running 12.0.1.

I agree that it is an iOS 12 "issue"--or "feature" if you believe Apple. We have one iPad that didn't get upgraded and it never had any problem with the shared AppleIDs. But we found and are using a "fix" that is acceptable to us rather than mess with Apple Support or wait for another iOS update that may or may not fix our problem. I know many folks are experiencing other problems that aren't related to the shared AppleIDs.

We also found that the XS is "incompatible" with the Belkin Charging Stations that we use for our phones and watches. I think it's a Belkin hardware problem and not something that iOS can fix because our older iPhones still charge OK after updating to iOS 12.0 and 12.0.1.