An internal Messages error occurred. (tried everything)

I have the same issue as well. It appeared when I first upgraded to Mojave, and I have the exact same situation on my Mac mini 2018, my MacBook Pro 2014 and my iMac 2012. None of the solutions proposed earlier in this thread has worked so far. I'll keep following the thread hoping Apple can fix this!

Same problem here after upgrading a Mac to Mojave. I've tried all of the fixes suggested here and in other places to no avail. Certain contacts messages seem to not appear, yet others appear just fine on the Mac. Sometime I get the internal error, other times I do not, but the problem persists. When I send a message to particular contacts from my Mac, the contact receives the message but if I quit and relaunch Messages on the Mac, the message I just sent disappears from Messages. Can't find any way to resolve this problem. Really hope Apple is looking into this!

Interesting side note: Sharing files from Finder via messages sometimes generates an account not configured error and then when you instead share to a recent messaged contact it shares it with messages immediately. My iOS devices shows new messages from each other immediately whereas the MAC messages app is delayed (even when shared from Finder) and sometimes the message never shows up.

Same problem here.

Done so far with Apple Support:

• log out and in of Messages
• log out and in of iCloud
• Safe Mode
• Internet Recovery
• Clean system install

No improvement at all. "Future update will address this".

Waiting...

I have deleted all old messages from my phone to see if it would help, but nothing. I can't believe how long this has been a problem. I've reported it to Apple via the feedback app. Hopefully they will get a fix in. I'm seeing the following package contents when trying to execute the application. Note that I've put the symbols "****" over my user information. Does this package information help anyone know what needs to be fixed?

Last login: Fri Mar  1 19:51:31 on ttys000

/Applications/Messages.app/Contents/MacOS/Messages ; exit;

****s-iMac:~ ****$ /Applications/Messages.app/Contents/MacOS/Messages ; exit;

2019-03-01 19:57:32.872 Messages[750:25695] Could not connect action, target class UnifiedChatListViewController does not respond to -switchSenderFiltering:

2019-03-01 19:57:32.893 Messages[750:25695] WARNING: The SplitView is not layer-backed, but trying to use overlay sidebars.. implicitly layer-backing for now. Please file a radar against this app if you see this.

2019-03-01 19:57:32.936 Messages[750:25695] Could not connect action, target class UnifiedChatWindowController does not respond to -deleteSelectedConversationNoPrompt:

2019-03-01 19:57:32.975 Messages[750:25695] Failed to connect (_buddiesBlockPersonMenuItem) outlet from (MessagesAppDelegate) to (NSMenuItem): missing setter or instance variable

logout

Saving session...

...copying shared history...

...saving history...truncating history files...

...completed.

Deleting expired sessions...9 completed.

[Process completed]

I've tried everything but the preview panel is completely out of whack and I'm still getting the message "There was a problem with Messages. You need to quit and open Messages again."

My messages are still there but will only show when I individually message someone. This is very annoying and must be fixed. Help!

10.14.4 did not solve this problem.

Isn't it fun to listen to a keynote where Tim talks about services and he can't even get messages/icloud to work? Charging me money each month for something that does not work. Amazing.

Either its server side and we can't do anything (probably since every single Mac I have the same problem)

or its something with SIP that was introduced in 10.14.

All my messages are locally stored, but I can't see them. That is a rights issue. And with SIP we can't do rights management. HSF+ is horrible and over 90% that verify with diskutil will find wrong permissions. We can't do this check anymore with SIP.

maybe one day I have time to turn off SIP and grand the files correct RWX and see if it fixes the problem. But.. horrible apple support for a problem 10000+ people have.

I have the exact same problem as you guys. Really annoying, especially when messaging important contacts crash messages. Then, I get the error when trying to start it up again. On 2nd try, it usually logs in, but the message thread from the contact is gone. Logs out randomly, errors out most times on restarting. Held my breath through every update but 10.14.4 still does not solve the problem. Sigh...

I too thought that it was a text so I started deleting text messages like an idiot and either I didn’t find the thread with the content that was causing the problem or it didn’t work. Very very frustrating. My husband and I have the exact same computer purchased days apart. Same sort of situation with you and your wife. His computer has no issues whatsoever mine is acting like a brat. Didn’t we all come over to the Mac brand to avoid software issues in the first place?

Just installed the Mojave 10.14.4 update and continue to have messages on my iOS devices that do not exist on my MAC. Since messages are being stored in iCloud and all devices are pointing to iCloud, there is apparently still a problem. Also read through the update notes and nothing about this error was included as a fix.

I have the same issue - error comes up the first time I try to open Messages, then it works the second time. The Messages that I can see on my Mac are a fraction of the conversations that I have on my phone. It recently started, I'm not sure what triggered it, but I did enable text message forwarding and I probably hit the Sync messages button. I'm shocked this has been happening for so long, to so many people and there isn't even a workaround ...

Wow you are brave. I started deleting messages but couldn’t bare to delete them all. There is valuable content in those convos! I am going to grin and bear this annoyance. I am certainly not pleased. I really wish there was a way to wash my messages and identify the “dirty” ones.

I don't like to 'rain your parade' but my experience (sorry I have no proof to offer) is that the first time your write a message to someone Apple's corrupt system doesn't like you'll get the dreaded message and all your hard work will be in vein. I hope I'm wrong.

I still believe as others have said this must be an Apple iCloud issue following the Mojave 'upgrade' (my wife's similar set up to mine on Sierra doesn't have the problem) and its outrageous their engineers haven't sorted this out after all this time.

I've followed this thread since I also have suffered from this. Thanks for your input.

Are you saying that if I do an upgrade to Mojave then I have to delete chat.DB files, restart and then everything will work with iCloud sync, or did you mean that iCloud has to stay turned off for messages?

I installed 10.14.6 yesterday (BTW it wasn't in auto update - I had to search) and regretfully the normal 'internal message' came back this morning.

The release notes for 14.6 didn't make any mention of a fix for this problem - looks like the Apple people are going to make us wait for Catalina........