I have kept the texts between my dad and I since he suddenly died 3 years ago. Nice to be able to scroll through them every once in a while and reminisce.
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iCloud Messages Returns to iOS in First Beta of iOS 11.3
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I would expect it will be in WatchOS 4.3 beta ...coming soon.
The problem is that while they are synced across devices when the message come in, once they are synced they exist on each device locally. If you have to set up a device as new and don’t have accesss to your older devices you’d have no option to get older messages back.
My mom passed away unexpectedly a year ago this April. I would be extremely sad if I lost her message thread. I have threads going back 5/6 years with friends and family. I keep them for a reason. I delete superfluous messages (codes, and other BS).
So yeah, I am really looking forward to this and the fact that when I delete a thread, it's GONE from ALL DEVICES! Was nice in the 11.X betas until they removed it. Nice to see it coming back.
I’m a little confused. So messages in the cloud syncs my messages across my devices. But only the devices using the same mobile number/email for messages?? I ask because my wife’s iPhone is logged into my iCloud as we like to share photos using photo stream. But obviously her messages use a different mobile/email. Her texts won’t sync onto my phone right?? That would be a nightmare as she literally has thousands of texts from many years ago!
Rather doubt it -- probably more like Mail in that it sends/receives whenever there's a connection but caches (some) messages for offline viewing. I would guess that full-sized images are the first things that would get purged the way the Photos app does it -- meaning you get a low-res preview and have to be online to download the full image. I could of course be wrong about all this, but it would be in keeping with the way other Apple iCloud-enabled apps work.
Before putting anything on iCloud servers in China read this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/opinion/apple-china-data.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/opinion/apple-china-data.html
"Customers registered in China, according to Apple’s new terms and conditions agreement for the country, must “understand and agree that Apple and G.C.B.D. will have access to all data that you store on this service, including the right to share, exchange and disclose all user data, including content, to and between each other under applicable law.”
In short, all personal user information stored on the iCloud — including photos, videos, text files, contacts, calendars and iCloud email — will be shared with Guizhou-Cloud Big Data and could be available to the Chinese authorities as well. Apple has said that G.C.B.D. will not have access to the personal data stored in its facility without Apple’s permission, but the new terms and conditions agreement appears to say the opposite.
Under the agreement, Apple seems to be absolving itself of responsibility for what the authorities may choose to do with personal data in G.C.B.D.’s hands. Users who refuse Apple’s terms will be denied iCloud services. Users who accept run the risk of unwittingly provoking the ire of the aggressive police state, resulting in deleted data or accounts, or harassment and imprisonment."
In short, all personal user information stored on the iCloud — including photos, videos, text files, contacts, calendars and iCloud email — will be shared with Guizhou-Cloud Big Data and could be available to the Chinese authorities as well. Apple has said that G.C.B.D. will not have access to the personal data stored in its facility without Apple’s permission, but the new terms and conditions agreement appears to say the opposite.
Under the agreement, Apple seems to be absolving itself of responsibility for what the authorities may choose to do with personal data in G.C.B.D.’s hands. Users who refuse Apple’s terms will be denied iCloud services. Users who accept run the risk of unwittingly provoking the ire of the aggressive police state, resulting in deleted data or accounts, or harassment and imprisonment."
It’s basically like telegram. You can get a new ios device and load all your iMessages on it automatically.
Plus, if you have different iMessage histories across all your Apple devices, you can finally them all in sync now.
But how many people use any significant portion of that? Most people use the full 5 GB Apple gives you now, and then some. Sure, Google "gives" you 15 GB but I'd be interested to know if they actually have that much capacity if everyone suddenly filled it up tomorrow.
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Well I can only work with actual published numbers, not secret knowledge from a random person on the internet.
You really might consider Family Sharing and pooling a shared Photos gallery, vs. logging in with the exact same Apple ID.
Apple doesn’t monetise its services the same way google does, so it charges its users for them to cover the costs of running them.
I don’t mind paying $1 a month for 50 gb of cloud storage in exchange for Apple not subjecting me to the same business model that google is using. At least I know where I stand on the Apple side of things.
I imagine that this is one of the issues they've been trying to work out all this time...definitely not an easy question.
Interesting. For the same reason people want this, I don't. Cant recall how many times I've deleted whole threads only to want to retrieve something from it and thought I couldn't but then remembered it also sent to my iPad or MacBook pro. Probably a feature I wont be using. Currently works perfect for me.
Work!! Pictures to clients. Data sent to subs... Need to save them for reference! Good stuff!!! Have only 4 years but sorely needed to be saved!!!
What actually is this feature? My ios devices already sync messages with one another so what else is this bringing to the table? Is this where I can log in to iCloud on a PC and use the messages in the icloud from Windows to communicate from non-iOS devices?
Steve Jobs promised way back in the iMessages keynote that it would be an open standard.
Steve Jobs promised way back in the iMessages keynote that it would be an open standard.
But making money off people paying for storage is nicer.
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For some of us here, that may be the bigger benefit.
I created a program that imports all my iMessages into Day One (a journaling app) and then back that up in crazy ways.. cause the thought of losing some of the messages from people that have passed on.. it kills me. Thats all I have from some of them.
With a phone, iPad and Mac, I delete once and it is removed from all devices. That is huge.
Hopefully this will introduce a feature like Notes & Photos have of recently deleted.
The way this could work is a message thread is deleted. Then that thread is removed form the main view and moved into a recently deleted view. After 30 days if it hasn't been recovered then it is actually deleted but not before then.
This would prevent accidental deletes.
The way this could work is a message thread is deleted. Then that thread is removed form the main view and moved into a recently deleted view. After 30 days if it hasn't been recovered then it is actually deleted but not before then.
This would prevent accidental deletes.
It's not "syncing", it's simply copying amongst the devices. A true sync would mean if you delete a message from your iPhone, it will disappear from Messages on other iOS devices as well as any Apple computers you use. It does NOT do that today .... and it sucks.
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The other devices need to support the feature as well. It appears that the current betas of macOS do not (yet). I have 10.13.3 at the moment but I now see that 10.13.4, Dev Beta 1 is available. No 'changelog' seems to be available at the moment but I'm guessing it adds support.
Saw a screenshot from another user and can confirm that Messages/iCloud syncing is back on macOS.
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Deletion of iMessages are now also synced.