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iMessages not fully synced on new iPhone Xs

I

iAdamator

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 10, 2013
698
172
South San Francisco, CA
Good morning.

Last night I got my new iPhone Xs and choose the option to bring my iPhone 8 near it and set it up that what. I restored from a backup (that I freshly updated before starting) and everything went fine.

However I’ve noticed my iMessages are not completely synced. I have all the messages from my wife saved going back to the day we met and I always transfer them to a new phone. iMessage was syncing all night on WiFi and it still seems to be about 2 weeks behind. I don’t see any indication that it is still syncing. Is there anything I can do to force the rest of the sync?
 
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iAdamator said:
However I’ve noticed my iMessages are not completely synced. I have all the messages from my wife saved going back to the day we met and I always transfer them to a new phone. iMessage was syncing all night on WiFi and it still seems to be about 2 weeks behind. I don’t see any indication that it is still syncing. Is there anything I can do to force the rest of the sync?
Click to expand...
I’m having this exact same issue. Most of my Messages content loaded up through mid August, but nothing more recent. I’ve tried disabling and re-enabling Messages in iCloud but hasn’t seemed to change anything. Hopefully this will sort itself...
 
I had the same issue, what I did is I turned off Messages on iCloud on all devices waited a bit, then I did encrypted backup of up my old iPhone in iTunes. After that I selected Restore Backup in iTunes and restored backup from old iPhone to new one and now I've got all my messages up to the moment I received the iPhone back.
 
iAdamator said:
Good morning.

Last night I got my new iPhone Xs and choose the option to bring my iPhone 8 near it and set it up that what. I restored from a backup (that I freshly updated before starting) and everything went fine.

However I’ve noticed my iMessages are not completely synced. I have all the messages from my wife saved going back to the day we met and I always transfer them to a new phone. iMessage was syncing all night on WiFi and it still seems to be about 2 weeks behind. I don’t see any indication that it is still syncing. Is there anything I can do to force the rest of the sync?
Click to expand...

I am getting very similar behavior. I'm guessing/hoping it's the servers.
If I go try to untoggle messages from the iCloud settings screen, I get a message saying they are not completely downloaded yet, even though I am no longer getting the "downloading" indicator at the bottom of the main messages screen.
 
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Same with me. Missing anywhere from 6 months to a year in each message.

X iCloud backup to Xs Max iCloud Restore.
 
Same issue here. Hoping for a solution. Maybe iMessages in iCloud is overloaded from everyone setting up their new phones?
 
How many people seeing this issue (using iMessage in iCloud and restoring to a new iPhone, and missing a chunk of most recent messages) ran the beta over the summer? I did. Could it be related?
 
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same issue for me! and on top of that the attachments in each message are out of order. you guys seeing that?
 
astromoose said:
I am getting very similar behavior. I'm guessing/hoping it's the servers.
If I go try to untoggle messages from the iCloud settings screen, I get a message saying they are not completely downloaded yet, even though I am no longer getting the "downloading" indicator at the bottom of the main messages screen.
Click to expand...


What are you doh get exactly to show the msssages not downloaded messages?

I looked at mine again and mine are about a week behind right now. I was close to wiping my phone and restoring again but if others are having problems, it’s obviously not just me. Also tempted to back my old phone up to my computer and restore the new one from that. But I don’t want to do all this if I don’t have to.

Anyone contacted Apple about this?


Edit. Another issue I’m having is sms messages aren’t showing up on my Apple Watch at all. Usually they do.
 
Ever since setting up my XS Max, SMS messages are not synching across my devices (Macs, iPads, two iPhones, watch. Have tried everything, nothing is working.
 
dantracht said:
Ever since setting up my XS Max, SMS messages are not synching across my devices (Macs, iPads, two iPhones, watch. Have tried everything, nothing is working.
Click to expand...
Same
[doublepost=1537715218][/doublepost]on the phone with apple support about this. This is something that has to be fixed asap because my old phone isn't getting anymore texts period since the new phone has the SIM card activated in it now so apparently even though iCloud iMessages is turned on it won't sync to another phone that doesn't have that sim in it or that could be a bug too... anyone have any insight?
 
atlchamp said:
Same
[doublepost=1537715218][/doublepost]on the phone with apple support about this. This is something that has to be fixed asap because my old phone isn't getting anymore texts period since the new phone has the SIM card activated in it now so apparently even though iCloud iMessages is turned on it won't sync to another phone that doesn't have that sim in it or that could be a bug too... anyone have any insight?
Click to expand...
Just did a chat with apple support, and I have a call scheduled for Tuesday. They seemed baffled about this. They also think it will "resolve itself" in a day or two, but not sure how confident I am in that solution. On another thread, someone mentioned having to restore their phone again for it to work. I suspect that's what the solution will be, but will wait for apple to contact me.
[doublepost=1537715786][/doublepost]
iAdamator said:
What are you doh get exactly to show the msssages not downloaded messages?

I looked at mine again and mine are about a week behind right now. I was close to wiping my phone and restoring again but if others are having problems, it’s obviously not just me. Also tempted to back my old phone up to my computer and restore the new one from that. But I don’t want to do all this if I don’t have to.

Anyone contacted Apple about this?


Edit. Another issue I’m having is sms messages aren’t showing up on my Apple Watch at all. Usually they do.
Click to expand...
Same, SMS not showing up on watch at all. Starting to think this is an activation software bug on apple's side?
 
atlchamp said:
I hope this is something that they can fix, people's iMessages are simply disappearing from threads and entire threads aren't syncing over properly
Click to expand...
Having that issue, and SMS's are not synching across my Macs/iphone/ipad/Apple Watch. I also can't send or receive SMS from my MBP.
 
I personally was able to resolve this yesterday. After much toggling of Messages in iCloud on/off and rebooting, trying to get an update to trigger, I ended up doing fresh iCloud backups of both my new Max and old 7+, then wiping my Max, then restoring the fresh 7+ backup to it via iCloud. (Not using the ‘hold old phone near new one’ method which I did before). The restore went much more smoothly this time with Messages all getting restored within an hour (and the progress bar in-app actually moving meanwhile). I also refrained from disconnecting power or WiFi until all messages were restored. I think that may have been what interrupted it last time and for some reason it never resumed. Anyways, I’m happy, it’s working now. Hope this helped at all, best of luck to you all. Enjoy those new phones!! This device is amazing.
 
midkay said:
I personally was able to resolve this yesterday. After much toggling of Messages in iCloud on/off and rebooting, trying to get an update to trigger, I ended up doing fresh iCloud backups of both my new Max and old 7+, then wiping my Max, then restoring the fresh 7+ backup to it via iCloud. (Not using the ‘hold old phone near new one’ method which I did before). The restore went much more smoothly this time with Messages all getting restored within an hour (and the progress bar in-app actually moving meanwhile). I also refrained from disconnecting power or WiFi until all messages were restored. I think that may have been what interrupted it last time and for some reason it never resumed. Anyways, I’m happy, it’s working now. Hope this helped at all, best of luck to you all. Enjoy those new phones!! This device is amazing.
Click to expand...

As much as I hate to I may just do this too. One downside for me is my old phone is no longer active with a SIM card and so I can’t activate messages. The last ones it got was on Friday before I setup my new phone. I can live with the messages from the last 2 days being lost if I must but it would be nice to fix it.

Right now these are my iMessages:

iPad Pro: completely up to date.
Old iPhone 8: Last update Friday.
New iPhone Xs: Begins Friday, has older messages but has approx a 1 week gap between 9/14 and 9/21.
 
iAdamator said:
As much as I hate to I may just do this too. One downside for me is my old phone is no longer active with a SIM card and so I can’t activate messages. The last ones it got was on Friday before I setup my new phone. I can live with the messages from the last 2 days being lost if I must but it would be nice to fix it.

Right now these are my iMessages:

iPad Pro: completely up to date.
Old iPhone 8: Last update Friday.
New iPhone Xs: Begins Friday, has older messages but has approx a 1 week gap between 9/14 and 9/21.
Click to expand...
thats my fear...losing texts from yesterday until whenever I decide/have to do this...apple just needs to sync the older messages from my X to my XS whenever they fix this. Why is this so damn hard for them smh
 
midkay said:
I personally was able to resolve this yesterday. After much toggling of Messages in iCloud on/off and rebooting, trying to get an update to trigger, I ended up doing fresh iCloud backups of both my new Max and old 7+, then wiping my Max, then restoring the fresh 7+ backup to it via iCloud. (Not using the ‘hold old phone near new one’ method which I did before). The restore went much more smoothly this time with Messages all getting restored within an hour (and the progress bar in-app actually moving meanwhile). I also refrained from disconnecting power or WiFi until all messages were restored. I think that may have been what interrupted it last time and for some reason it never resumed. Anyways, I’m happy, it’s working now. Hope this helped at all, best of luck to you all. Enjoy those new phones!! This device is amazing.
Click to expand...


I wiped my phone and restored it like you did. Trouble is my iMessages download bar isn’t moving. I’m trying to leave it to do it’s thing. I hope it starts downloading them. I have it plugged in and on wifi.
[doublepost=1537745759][/doublepost]Ugh. Now my messages on my new phone appear to be done syncing but they are worse than they were before. I have like a month+ gap in them now!
 
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