Hi everyone,
Apologies if this is the wrong forum for this, I don't entirely know what's going on in my ecosystem but figured I'd start here.
I’m experiencing a long-term, cascading edge-case tech issue that seems rooted in either my Mac and/or Apple ID environment. I am pretty desperate for help at this point as it's affecting my data integrity, my ability to receive notifications timely, and literally all of my apps. It's genuinely taken over my entire life and I am at my wit's end. Apple support has not helped- they finally acknowledged something is wrong on my end in November of last year, but every senior advisor I have spoken to stops answering after a few weeks after the initial first follow up or two, with some variation of "engineers are aware of your issue, a fix may occur at some point" with zero timeline, follow up, actionable steps, illumination onto what exactly the issues are, anything at all.
Here is a timeline of what exactly happened: (issues started a few months after I got my macbook, for context, also bear in mind as you read that every app I have I am also logged into on my macbook)
Timeline of Issues
~October 2024:
Instagram algorithm and UI started behaving strangely, broken algorithms and weird UI stuff, as if they were being fed garbled signals they couldn't interpret.
TikTok began showing similar issues at the same time, which was weird, as these apps are not connected.
These issues stabilized for roughly a year, and I was under the impression this was a server side Instagram and tiktok thing that happened to both be occuring at once.
September:
Instagram and Tiktok Problems abruptly worsened, breaking previous stability. EVERY OTHER APP (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, Pinterest etc) Started breaking the EXACT same way, making it clear it was no longer feasible for this to be a server side issue as this would not miraculously affect all of these unrelated apps at once.
All the apps would start randomly deleting all old in-app notifications, settings would be very slow to load, showing me absolute nonsense for content as if none of these apps were getting clear signals from my devices to use for the algorithm, UI glitches absolutely INSANE, randomly not showing likes on posts, skipping around, moving all items in saved folders to other folders, etc the list goes on. Absolute nightmare chaos.
October:
Attempted to switch from old iPhone 14 (iOS 18.5) to new iPhone 17 (iOS 26) as I was advised the highest likelihood was an issue with my iphone.
iOS 26 had a message indexing/search bug unrelated to my issues that prevented smooth transition, so I delayed full switch and just kept the new iphone set up without switching the SIM, hoping a software update would come that would fix this issue as apple repeatedly assured me would happen (spoiler-it never got fixed).
November:
Observed more severe iMessage problems:
-Entire threads deleting and Contacts or conversations merging or separating incorrectly- all of these things happened after I pressed "sync now" manually on imessages on my mac, which I'd never done before. IMPORTANTLY, the imessage sync counter does not go down accordingly when this happens, however the messages are gone across devices, not in recently deleted, and not searchable when this occurs.
- I noticed more and more often messages coming through later on Mac, sometimes it woudl come through right away if I restarted the app, sometimes it would take several minutes no matter what
-recently deleted section became corrupt on both my phones, showing incorrect dates for deleted messages and also not deleting them after 30 days as my settings are set (this issue is interestingly enough not occuring on Mac, but I also haven't manually synced the mac since before this happened)
-deleted photos also "off" with timestamps, as soon I delete one it says "deleting in 29 days" When it should say 30 days, this also occurs when I delete from icloud.com
-Uploading photos from iPhone to Mac corrupted the local Photos library (likely metadata corruption).
It is at this time Apple finally acknolwedges I was right, something is wrong and has been wrong for some time. Prior to this they'd been gaslighting me nonstop with the "Apple can't affect third party apps" spiel.
December:
I start noticing notifications (everything from imessage to messenger to disscord) coming in later on ALL devices. The time stamp is always correctly shown as when it was sent, but I don't get them until later. It can be anywhere from a minute to the next morning.
I notice on my phone, when I post on any social media site, it immediately says "posted now" which is what it should say, but with my mac it immediately jumps to "posted 1 min ago" even when I immediately posted.
A week ago (full switch to iPhone 17):
Continued issues on new phone that's undergone multiple hardware checks and erase/restores confirmed that old phone was not the cause.
I realized two apps I use EXCLUSIVELY on mac and have never been used on my phone were behaving similarly to the apps on my phone (purging all older notifications, Ui glitches, etc) so the source of this all could not have been the old phone
I guess I need to know these things:
Has anyone experienced multi-app, cross-device corruption tied to macOS / Apple ID, or has any idea what the **** is happening to me?
Are there safe in-place reinstall or framework repair options that do not risk data?
Any logs, reports, or diagnostic steps to identify root cause before attempting a reinstall?
Is the likeliest scenario that the mac has been feeding "bad info" (forgive me lack of technical prowess) to icloud that's gotten stuck there, or that my apple ID just became corrupted? Because to my understanding scenario 1 is much likelier, but I don't know.
Getting a new Apple ID is not an option as it would make me lose my imessages, purchases, and other precious data and I have a strong suspicion it wouldn't fix the issue. I never get sign in errors or anything like that.
Any other suggestions I am completely open to and actually beyond desperate for help at this point. as someone who is physically disabled with genetic neurological issues, severe insomnia and more, I rely on my devices a lot. it's honestly to the point my entire life is shambles from this. I have lost SO many people in my life, and my mom has early onset dementia so I see what happens when memory fails- my messages and photos have always meant the world to me and I still can't fully comprehend this nightmare I'm in where nothing works as it should. It is breaking EVERYTHING. My data, my apps, my way of communicating with people. I am constantly on edge about losing more data (yes I'm working on backing all my photos onto an external drive but those fail too, and I obviously don't trust the cloud at this point, and can't use the photos app now as any time I attempt to upload my photos it causes chaos in my local library there which is larger than my icloud library). I am so thankful for any insight I receive at this point as to what on earth could be causing this nightmare.
If you read this far, thank you so much for reading and for any input you may have, it means the absolute world and would genuinely make turn my entire life around.
Apologies if this is the wrong forum for this, I don't entirely know what's going on in my ecosystem but figured I'd start here.
I’m experiencing a long-term, cascading edge-case tech issue that seems rooted in either my Mac and/or Apple ID environment. I am pretty desperate for help at this point as it's affecting my data integrity, my ability to receive notifications timely, and literally all of my apps. It's genuinely taken over my entire life and I am at my wit's end. Apple support has not helped- they finally acknowledged something is wrong on my end in November of last year, but every senior advisor I have spoken to stops answering after a few weeks after the initial first follow up or two, with some variation of "engineers are aware of your issue, a fix may occur at some point" with zero timeline, follow up, actionable steps, illumination onto what exactly the issues are, anything at all.
Here is a timeline of what exactly happened: (issues started a few months after I got my macbook, for context, also bear in mind as you read that every app I have I am also logged into on my macbook)
Timeline of Issues
~October 2024:
Instagram algorithm and UI started behaving strangely, broken algorithms and weird UI stuff, as if they were being fed garbled signals they couldn't interpret.
TikTok began showing similar issues at the same time, which was weird, as these apps are not connected.
These issues stabilized for roughly a year, and I was under the impression this was a server side Instagram and tiktok thing that happened to both be occuring at once.
September:
Instagram and Tiktok Problems abruptly worsened, breaking previous stability. EVERY OTHER APP (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, Pinterest etc) Started breaking the EXACT same way, making it clear it was no longer feasible for this to be a server side issue as this would not miraculously affect all of these unrelated apps at once.
All the apps would start randomly deleting all old in-app notifications, settings would be very slow to load, showing me absolute nonsense for content as if none of these apps were getting clear signals from my devices to use for the algorithm, UI glitches absolutely INSANE, randomly not showing likes on posts, skipping around, moving all items in saved folders to other folders, etc the list goes on. Absolute nightmare chaos.
October:
Attempted to switch from old iPhone 14 (iOS 18.5) to new iPhone 17 (iOS 26) as I was advised the highest likelihood was an issue with my iphone.
iOS 26 had a message indexing/search bug unrelated to my issues that prevented smooth transition, so I delayed full switch and just kept the new iphone set up without switching the SIM, hoping a software update would come that would fix this issue as apple repeatedly assured me would happen (spoiler-it never got fixed).
November:
Observed more severe iMessage problems:
-Entire threads deleting and Contacts or conversations merging or separating incorrectly- all of these things happened after I pressed "sync now" manually on imessages on my mac, which I'd never done before. IMPORTANTLY, the imessage sync counter does not go down accordingly when this happens, however the messages are gone across devices, not in recently deleted, and not searchable when this occurs.
- I noticed more and more often messages coming through later on Mac, sometimes it woudl come through right away if I restarted the app, sometimes it would take several minutes no matter what
-recently deleted section became corrupt on both my phones, showing incorrect dates for deleted messages and also not deleting them after 30 days as my settings are set (this issue is interestingly enough not occuring on Mac, but I also haven't manually synced the mac since before this happened)
-deleted photos also "off" with timestamps, as soon I delete one it says "deleting in 29 days" When it should say 30 days, this also occurs when I delete from icloud.com
-Uploading photos from iPhone to Mac corrupted the local Photos library (likely metadata corruption).
It is at this time Apple finally acknolwedges I was right, something is wrong and has been wrong for some time. Prior to this they'd been gaslighting me nonstop with the "Apple can't affect third party apps" spiel.
December:
I start noticing notifications (everything from imessage to messenger to disscord) coming in later on ALL devices. The time stamp is always correctly shown as when it was sent, but I don't get them until later. It can be anywhere from a minute to the next morning.
I notice on my phone, when I post on any social media site, it immediately says "posted now" which is what it should say, but with my mac it immediately jumps to "posted 1 min ago" even when I immediately posted.
A week ago (full switch to iPhone 17):
Continued issues on new phone that's undergone multiple hardware checks and erase/restores confirmed that old phone was not the cause.
I realized two apps I use EXCLUSIVELY on mac and have never been used on my phone were behaving similarly to the apps on my phone (purging all older notifications, Ui glitches, etc) so the source of this all could not have been the old phone
I guess I need to know these things:
Has anyone experienced multi-app, cross-device corruption tied to macOS / Apple ID, or has any idea what the **** is happening to me?
Are there safe in-place reinstall or framework repair options that do not risk data?
Any logs, reports, or diagnostic steps to identify root cause before attempting a reinstall?
Is the likeliest scenario that the mac has been feeding "bad info" (forgive me lack of technical prowess) to icloud that's gotten stuck there, or that my apple ID just became corrupted? Because to my understanding scenario 1 is much likelier, but I don't know.
Getting a new Apple ID is not an option as it would make me lose my imessages, purchases, and other precious data and I have a strong suspicion it wouldn't fix the issue. I never get sign in errors or anything like that.
Any other suggestions I am completely open to and actually beyond desperate for help at this point. as someone who is physically disabled with genetic neurological issues, severe insomnia and more, I rely on my devices a lot. it's honestly to the point my entire life is shambles from this. I have lost SO many people in my life, and my mom has early onset dementia so I see what happens when memory fails- my messages and photos have always meant the world to me and I still can't fully comprehend this nightmare I'm in where nothing works as it should. It is breaking EVERYTHING. My data, my apps, my way of communicating with people. I am constantly on edge about losing more data (yes I'm working on backing all my photos onto an external drive but those fail too, and I obviously don't trust the cloud at this point, and can't use the photos app now as any time I attempt to upload my photos it causes chaos in my local library there which is larger than my icloud library). I am so thankful for any insight I receive at this point as to what on earth could be causing this nightmare.
If you read this far, thank you so much for reading and for any input you may have, it means the absolute world and would genuinely make turn my entire life around.
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