New iPhone XS Max “Number changed to Primary” notification in iMessage

This is what worked for me.

Issue started after I changed my plan with ATT and rebooted a few times. Didn't want to lose the contacts or the years of SMS I've been collecting as an information hoarder. Spent two days on the interwebbernets looking for the definitive answer and trying different things. This worked - for me - and has stuck for a few hours:

1) Settings -> Messages

1) Send and Receive -

Turn off all addresses except phone number.

Turn off iMessage

2) Settings -> Phone

1) My Number

• • • Delete the phone number that is in this field.

3) Reboot phone

1) I didn't do hard reset, hard powerdown, none of that. Just vol down and side button until "power off" option, then once it was off for about a minute turned it back on.

4) Settings -> Messages

1) Turn iMessage back on.

2) wait a few seconds. Can back out of menu and come back in. Want to make sure it's no longer "waiting for approval"

3) Adjust "Send and Receive" to what you want it to be

• • • I receive at a few places, only send from phone number.
    • You will notice that there IS a phone number again.

5) Reboot iPhone - see step 3. Nothing funky here.

Viola - I tested with my droid buddies and no longer see the message.

This was all done on iOS 12.2 on a XS Max 512.

~D

To Remove the "Number changed to Primary" in the messages. Go to "Find My Iphone" and make sure you remove the devices you are not using. I had a customer that was signed into 3 phones, had her go to icloud.com and sign into "Find My Iphone", once the map popped up, it showed the actual device she was using, it says "This Device", all the other unnecessary phones said "offline". I had her click on each offline phone and select "Remove from Account". Once they were removed, went to the messages to test it right away. RESOLVED

I had the same problem, if your not using the secondary line , go to settings, cellular then tap the secondary line a pop message will appear and say line not in use would you like to revamp contacts hit ok and this resolved the issue for me.

Okay after some tinkering, I was able to fix this message on my phone without having to do full backup and restore like the OP. Note that I use a traditional microSIM and do not have an e-SIM. Also, like the OP, I do not see "add cellular plan" or other menu items in my phone...

First: Settings>Messages>Send & Receive... I enabled ONLY my mobile number to send and receive iMessages (the default setting was to allow my iCloud account to do the same).

Second: Turn off iMessage for a minute or so and then reactivate.

Third: Turned my phone off for about a minute and then turned it back on.

This resolved the issue in a matter of minutes and did not require wiping the phone. HALLELUJAH!

I had this happen too and I turned off my iMessages and my FaceTime for about 10 mins. Then went and turned them back on sent a few messages and it was gone.

I seemed to have fixed mine a shorter way. I just removed my phone number from iMessages and then reactivate iMessages on my phone. It gave me that “Number changed to Primary” label one time and then hasn’t done it since and I’ve exchanged 12 texts with another person so far. Whereas before I was getting it every 1 to 2 messages. So, seems like resetting iMessages is a solution also. Yay!

This worked for me. I also noticed that prior my phone number under Settings>Phone was being reported as 1 (###) ###-#### and after deregistering iMessage and activating again it shows as +1 (###) ###-#### as it had on previous iPhones — maybe a coincidence or related. Someone can try and just change the phone number without iMessage deactivation/activation and see if that fixes it.

Someone here posted that deleting that text message fixes it. While I didn’t want to lose my text history, I finally tried deleting the text and it went away. Must’ve been something in the header file for that text. No other solution on here worked except deleting the text. Good luck!

I know this is an old post but I wanted to add how I fixed this issue in hopes of helping anyone that stumbles upon this question.

I was having the same problem. I noticed it was only happening to one specific contact so I deleted the contact completely. Did a hard reset on the phone (push and quickly release volume up button >> push and quickly release volume down button >> press and hold lock button until it shuts off). Then entered the contact in again. This solved my issue 100%.

I was able to fix it Turning off iMessage in....

Setting>iMessages>Trun off the phone>Turn it back on..

Check if you can know send a Blue or Green Message, now if you do not get any results delete the conversation and start a new conversaton......

NOW if the issues is not fixed then delete the conversation again then ask the person who you are trying to reach to text you first then you should be able to Text as you did before. ☺ let me know if it works.

Just got off the phone with a great Apple Support Tech, resetting the network settings does the trick!

None of these tactics worked for me either. What DID work was to delete the text altogether. When a new texting session started, it was gone.

So something buried within the hidden headers of the message are linking that chat to ... something ... and it keeps getting reset when the other person texts. Or something... I'm not that good a programmer lol.

But I noticed that logging off and back on worked for some, but not all, chats. The two where the message kept coming up constantly cleared up when I deleted them and started new.

Of course, you lose all the history of the text within the app itself, which does suck, and may be a non-starter for you.

Awesome! Thank you. Does your Max show you having a second sim IMEI if you look under Settings>General>About and scroll down to the bottom? It shows my primary AT&T network info and then right under shows a second SIM IMEI.

Have you gone to this page? -https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201349

You have to set up the primary and secondary numbers on the XsM

Which you cannot theoretically do yet as that function is not yet available until released in a later iOS 12 update.