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Mac Messages no longer receiving texts when offline (NOT iCloud related)

E

edjusted

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 10, 2010
115
40
First, I do *not* have "Messages in iCloud" turned on. I've never used this feature and don't plan on it.

Up to maybe a month ago or so, if I received text messages when my Mac was off, they would still be retrieved when my Mac is turned on.

As of a few weeks ago, this stopped happening, and texts received when my Mac is off will never show up on my Mac.

I have Text Message Forwarding set correctly on my iPhone. I even turned it off and on, etc. And I've logged off and back on Messages on the Mac.

Texts sent to me when my Mac is on *are* showing up, so Forwarding *is* working.

I don't believe I've changed any settings on my Mac in the past few weeks relating to this, and I haven't done any sort of system updates.

Does anyone know what's going on, and better yet, how to fix this?
 
Interesting you don’t have messages in iCloud on but in lieu of that all you can do is turn off/on text message forwarding for the device to see if that works or check the sleep settings on your Mac and make sure it’s still able to retrieve data when sleeping or disable sleep completely.
 
Sheepish-Lord said:
Interesting you don’t have messages in iCloud on but in lieu of that all you can do is turn off/on text message forwarding for the device to see if that works or check the sleep settings on your Mac and make sure it’s still able to retrieve data when sleeping or disable sleep completely.
Click to expand...

Thanks.

I've tried turning text message forwarding on and off to that Mac a few times.

I don't think it's related to sleep because my Mac gets turned off.
When I turn my Mac on, any text messages that were sent to me when the Mac was off *did* get retrieved by the Mac.

It's just in the past few weeks that the Mac stopped retrieving messages sent to me when it was off.
 
Same issue here SMS forwarding to my mac works only when my mac is online. In Past the sms also were sent to the mac later when mac was online again. since a few weeks my mac only gets sms forwarded when the iphone is retrieving a sms and the mac is online at this time.

i'm also not using messages in icloud
 
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I assume these are green SMS/MMS text messages, not blue iMessages, since iCloud is turned off?

Assuming they are green SMS/MMS text messages, they have never been queued. The iPhone sends them, if the receiver can't accept them, it's lost. There is no queueing mechanism for them, only the blue messages get queued. It's possible one sneaked thru if your Mac just was turned on very quickly after a message was sent, but that's a fluke.

Delivery of past SMS/MMS messages to a Mac only reliably occurs if Messages in iCloud is enabled (because then the converted transcript is cloud-synced) or if the Mac was actually awake/Power Nap capable at receipt time. It has ALWAYS worked like this.

So when it worked in the past, it had to be one of these situations imho:
- The Mac was not off - it was sleeping.
- The messages were actually blue iMessages, which do sync later
- you had messages in iCloud enabled in the past.

You could leave your Mac sleeping (not shut down) with Power Nap / “Wake for network access” enabled. My Mac is never powered off except when I am taking it somewhere, like on a trip.
 
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Sorry but this is wrong.

In Past with Messages in iCloud disabled green SMS/MMS text messages where forwarded later to mac when mac was offline during initial receive on iphone. i powered my mac off everyday and sms gets forwarded on the next day to mac when it was online again.

this behavior is also commited in this german thread https://www.macuser.de/threads/sms-weiterleitungen-am-iphone-anderung.959079/#post-12624823 for ios 16.7.11 to macos 15.5. so something changed in ios 18 or there is a bug in current ios 18 builts.
 
Sorry forget that. You can't just delete messages
 
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MOM20xx said:
Sorry but this is wrong.

In Past with Messages in iCloud disabled green SMS/MMS text messages where forwarded later to mac when mac was offline during initial receive on iphone. i powered my mac off everyday and sms gets forwarded on the next day to mac when it was online again.

this behavior is also commited in this german thread https://www.macuser.de/threads/sms-weiterleitungen-am-iphone-anderung.959079/#post-12624823 for ios 16.7.11 to macos 15.5. so something changed in ios 18 or there is a bug in current ios 18 builts.
Click to expand...
Well, looking at Apple's documentation, here is why I concluded that it works the way I said:

1. In the "Set up messages in iCloud" section of this support document, it says "When you set up Messages in iCloud on your devices, your entire messages history is kept up to date across those devices, even when you set up a new device. " Doesn't that imply without setting up messages in iCloud, there is no history kept? So without that, how would a powered-up device sync? And in any case, can you find anywhere, where Apple says it keeps history somewhere, even on iPhone, when messages in iCloud is not enabled? With no history, there is no way to sync old messages.

Forward text messages from your iPhone to other devices - Apple Support

With the Text Message Forwarding feature of your iPhone, the SMS, MMS, or RCS messages that you send and receive on your iPhone can also appear on your Mac, iPad, and Apple Vision Pro, so you can continue the conversation from the device you want.
support.apple.com support.apple.com

2. "iPhone Text Message Forwarding security" explanation on this page certainly seems to explain that SMS is relayed live from the iPhone to enrolled devices, and back again; and, that no server queue exists.

iPhone Text Message Forwarding security

iPhone Text Message Forwarding securely sends SMS text messages received on an iPhone to a userʼs enrolled iPad, or Mac.
support.apple.com

You just won't find anywhere any discussion that SMS/MMS messages are kept for retry. Messages in iCloud are stored there, hence when a device comes back online and syncs, that device gets any messages it missed. There is no discussion anywhere of a sync of SMS/MMS messages.

If you are convinced your Mac was powered off, either you had Messages in iCloud toggled on, OR there was a bug where the system acted like that toggle was on even if it was off. I found no mention of that bug, although iOS 17.6.1 did address an issue where ADP toggle was off but the system acted as if it was on - so behavior with the iMessages in iCloud toggle could have been an bug that was fixed at some point - not broken so SMS/MMS messages were no longer stored and synced.

If you are still not convinced, file a bug report - I bet they close it as "working as intended".
 
@donawalt

according to https://support.apple.com/en-us/102545

the following in short has to be done to have sms forwarding work

Automatically forward messages​

  1. Make sure that each of your devices is signed in with the same Apple Account as your iPhone.
  2. Make sure that your iPhone is turned on and connected to a Wi-Fi or cellular network.
  3. Set up Messages in iCloud or Text Message Forwarding, as described below.




there is no notice, that mac or macbook has to be online when iphone receives an sms. this worked for years now as i described but since iOS 18 or later it has changed it's behavior.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/security/sec16bb20def/web says

After devices are linked, iPhone encrypts and forwards incoming SMS text messages to each device, utilising the methods described in iMessage security overview.

following this link you come to https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/security/secd9764312f/1/web/1 on the bottom of this page there is a link to https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/security/sec70e68c949/1/web/1

where apple says

As with all push notifications, the message is deleted from APNs when it’s delivered. Unlike other APNs notifications, however, iMessage messages are queued for delivery to offline devices. Messages are stored on Apple servers for up to 30 days.

And according to this notes sms forwarding works in past so that sms where later delivered to offline devices without having messages for icloud active. so why should apple change this behavior?
 
You quoted the answer! The three points are correct - Text forwarding has to be enabled. Where does it say they are queued for retry like it says for iCloud/iMessages? It doesn't! And you quoted it - Unlike other APNs notifications, however, iMessage messages are queued for delivery to offline devices. Messages are stored on Apple servers for up to 30 days. "Unlike other APN notifications means 'Apple Push Notification services' - the other APNs are NON-iMESSAGES. iMessages are queued - other APNs are NOT. What could be more clear?

And in case you are wondering, SMS/MMS messages are NOT iMessage messages! SMS and MMS are not considered iMessages by Apple; only texts that travel through Apple’s iMessage data service (the blue-bubble ones) qualify. Carrier-based SMS/MMS messages (the green-bubble ones) remain separate—even when they’re relayed to Macs or iPads via Text Message Forwarding—and Apple is explicit about this in its support article “What is the difference between iMessage, RCS, and SMS/MMS?” as well as in “Set up Messages on iPhone,” both available on support.apple.com.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/104972?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/set-up-messages-iph3d039b67/ios?utm_source=chatgpt.com 

I'm done - no sense arguing, believe what you want. Good luck getting it to work - just turn on iMessages in iCloud and your problem is solved. Or submit a bug to Apple and see how they respond.
 
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