Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

All my messages keep getting deleted

Gator5000e

Gator5000e

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 27, 2018
1,068
991
iOS18 is seemingly deleting most of the messages in the messages list. I open it this morning and there are 2 messages. One from this morning and one from Christmas of last year. Nothing else. The filter is set to all messages. If I go to Recently Deleted, I find all my Messages/Conversations. I have no idea how that happened. I sure as heck didn't delete all these messages. This NEVER happened under iOS 17.

So, is there a setting I am missing or one that got turned on during the upgrade to 18? I am truly perplexed. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

Oh and Messages in iCloud is turned off.

Thanks.
 
Last edited:
There is a Message History setting in Settings-->Apps-->Messages. Make sure to check it on every iOS/iPadOS/MacOS device, because syncing might be purging your stuff across all devices. Good thing they were in the recents for recovery.
 
Thanks, I don't have messages active in any device but my phone and watch. I don't get messages on my iPads. On my phone I have Keep Messages set at 1 year. It was deleting from as recent as yesterday. But I never really understood that setting.

However, in the watch app, under Messages, it is set for Custom. Does that mean when I delete messages from the watch they are deleting the entire conversation from the phone? Should I set it to Mirror my iPhone? Again, another setting I am not really clear on.

But appreciate any clarity you can throw my way.

Thanks again.
 
That setting is for notifications. Mirror means if you get a notification on your phone, deliver it to the watch too.
 
Thanks. Yeah I just realized that. No idea on why almost all conversations are being deleted? No other devices and I do not have iCloud sync turned on for messages. Kind of at a loss.
 
That is a very specific bug. Occurs when sharing a watch face. In my situation, no one shared a watch face. All I did was clean out some messages from some conversations but then all but two conversations got sent to the deleted folder. Maybe this is part of the same bug. Who knows.
 
Well. I just submitted a bug report to Apple regarding. Maybe not surprisingly, when you choose the OS you are on, 18 is not listed yet. So I didn't pick any OS and said in the narrative it happened since upgrading to iOS 18. The link to report the bug is at https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone
 
Update - it appears when I delete a message from my watch, it is deleting the ENTIRE conversation from my phone. I looked a bit closer at the confirmation language on my watch when I was deleting a single message and the message says Would you like to delete this CONVERSATION? I don't want to delete the entire conversation from my phone, I just want to delete the specific message on my watch. So I think this was the problem bug all along, at least for me. I will submit a new bug report. But if this is intended behavior then it sucks. Why does Apple think I need each and every message on my phone on my watch and that if I delete a single message on the watch, I want to delete the entire conversation on my phone. SMH.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: TallManNY and !!!
Gator5000e said:
Update - it appears when I delete a message from my watch, it is deleting the ENTIRE conversation from my phone. I looked a bit closer to the message on my watch I was deleting and the confirmation to delete asked if I wanted to delete this CONVERSATION. I don't want to delete the entire conversation from my phone, just the specific message on my watch. So I think this was the bug all along, at least for me. I will a new bug report.
Click to expand...
Wow, is this a new unannounced feature? I'm pretty sure messages used to only sync from the iPhone to the watch, and not the other way around (i.e. deleting messages from your watch didn't delete them from your phone.) I'm surprised we haven't seen this mentioned anywhere since there have been quite a few threads from people wanting that behavior (or thinking it wasn't working) in the past.

I think what you described makes sense though, and not necessarily a bug. How exactly are you deleting your messages? If you're on the screen that shows all your conversations and you swipe to delete, you are indeed deleting that conversation. It basically works the same way if you swipe to delete from the "all conversations" screen on the iPhone.

If you want to delete an individual message, then you need to go into the conversation, tap and hold the message, and delete it from there. When you do that, it asks if you want to delete this MESSAGE. Then only that message gets deleted from the phone. At least that's what I'm seeing with my limited/quick testing.
 
Gator5000e said:
Update - it appears when I delete a message from my watch, it is deleting the ENTIRE conversation from my phone. I looked a bit closer at the confirmation language on my watch when I was deleting a single message and the message says Would you like to delete this CONVERSATION? I don't want to delete the entire conversation from my phone, I just want to delete the specific message on my watch. So I think this was the problem bug all along, at least for me. I will submit a new bug report. But if this is intended behavior then it sucks. Why does Apple think I need each and every message on my phone on my watch and that if I delete a single message on the watch, I want to delete the entire conversation on my phone. SMH.
Click to expand...
You are 100% correct! I just tested this, and that is what is happening. If I delete either an individual message or a conversation off my watch, it removes it from my phone. When I restored the messages on my phone, they showed up on my watch again. Ugh!! I usually keep all my messages cleared off my watch as they come in. I have MANY gb's of messages on my phone. I don't want them on my watch. All my watch memory will be gone in no time. Definitely a bug for me. I'll submit a new bug report too.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Gator5000e and !!!
I really never noticed that entire conversations were on the watch before. I came to 11 from watchOS 9 as I was hanging on to the app dock (which I miss by the way). But I had to update the watch if I wanted it to connect with the phone. So I did. Maybe they were there and i never noticed it. But as you said, drkye, I don't want all those conversations on my watch. I want to delete them. But I guess now I can't. Sucks.
 
  • Like
Reactions: !!!
drkye said:
You are 100% correct! I just tested this, and that is what is happening. If I delete a message/conversation off my watch, it removes it from my phone. When I restored the messages on my phone, they showed up on my watch again. Ugh!! I usually keep all my messages cleared off my watch as they come in. I have MANY gb's of messages on my phone. I don't want them on my watch. All my watch memory will be gone in no time. Definitely a bug for me. I'll submit a new bug report too.
Click to expand...
See my earlier post above. I don't think it's a bug, but rather a new unannounced feature with how things work now. Deleting messages or conversations from the Apple Watch used to not delete them from the iPhone.

Also, assuming nothing else has changed, you won't run out of space on your watch. Messages on the Apple Watch have only kept the last 30 days of messages. Because of that, I've never bothered to delete my messages from my watch, and I know many others haven't either.
 
Thanks for the reply. But I'm the sort that wants my watch messages empty. I don't like having them all on the watch. It's just so Apple for them to think that I want the same conversations on my watch that I have on my phone. If it's a new way of doing things, I don't like it. At least give us an option to change the default to the way it was before.
 
  • Like
Reactions: !!!, drkye and iStorm
I can confirm it works both ways. If I delete a conversation from my watch it deletes it from my phone and if I delete it on my phone it deletes it from my watch. It didn't work like this when my phone was on 17.3.1 and watch on 9.6.1 Monday before I updated to 18.0 and 11.0..
 
  • Like
Reactions: Gator5000e, drkye and iStorm
Over half of my messages have disappeared. I know I did not delete and they are not in the recovery folder. Now I see this thread!

WTF Apple, did anyone test 18 before it came out? I did delete from my watch but that has never removed from my phone! I need these messages back.

Watch was on mirror. I switched to custom. Is mirror the default in 18? Bummer! Have always deleted my messages on my watch.
 
In the past I have always deleted my messages on my watch about once a week.

My Messages were, all of a sudden, disappearing from my phone. It seems my watch was set on “mirror” and when deleting from the watch, it was also deleting from my 15 ProMax. I changed to custom and am hoping it will not happen again. Seems when I updated my Ultra it somehow set the default to mirror?

Love to get my deleted messages back but they are no where to be found.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • Like
Reactions: goldmac2006
Jackbequickly said:
Over half of my messages have disappeared. I know I did not delete and they are not in the recovery folder. Now I see this thread!

WTF Apple, did anyone test 18 before it came out? I did delete from my watch but that has never removed from my phone! I need these messages back.

Watch was on mirror. I switched to custom. Is mirror the default in 18? Bummer! Have always deleted my messages on my watch.
Click to expand...
Mirror vs custom is about notifications only. If you can recover your messages, the option is in the messages app. Open the messages app, click on the "edit" in the top left, click on bottom option ("Show Recently Deleted"), and then click on "Recover All" in the bottom right of that page. Good luck. Hopefully Apple will give the option soon of not mirroring message conversations between the phone and watch.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Gator5000e
drkye said:
Mirror vs custom is about notifications only. If you can recover your messages, the option is in the messages app. Open the messages app, click on the "edit" in the top left, click on bottom option ("Show Recently Deleted"), and then click on "Recover All" in the bottom right of that page. Good luck. Hopefully Apple will give the option soon of not mirroring message conversations between the phone and watch.
Click to expand...
When I do what you suggest, my messages are not there to recover! Gone! Something has changed as I have always deleted my messages on my watch and they remained intact on my iPhone. Pissed!
 
Jackbequickly said:
When I do what you suggest, my messages are not there to recover! Gone! Something has changed as I have always deleted my messages on my watch and they remained intact on my iPhone. Pissed!
Click to expand...
Wow! I deleted and restored my messages several times before I realized the issue. Can you possibly restore the whole phone from a recent backup and then upgrade to iOS 18 again after the restore? I always force a full backup before every iOS update just to be safe.
 
Good to know. I have never deleted messages on the Watch itself, always have handled that on the iPhone so I know I actively deleted them myself and also they will show under the Recently Deleted folder in Messages for 30 days when doing so.
 
  • Like
Reactions: drkye
Maybe I am misunderstanding your post, but why would it be any different.
The whole point of utilising an ecosystem is that you only have one set of messages, emails, calendar, notes, reminders.
You delete any of these from any device and it will disappear from the ecosystem, i.e. from all devices.

Or is your issue that they don’t end up in the recently deleted folder? (That would be a bug)

You might well be able to decouple some devices, but why would you want to do that?
In my opinion, it will create unnecessary confusion and uncertainty over whether something still exists on some device or not.

BTW, the linked forum post seems to highlight a different complain about how deleting one message on the watch will delete the entire conversation from the ecosystem.
If true, this is clearly a nasty bug.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back