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getrealbro

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 25, 2015
604
262
I’m trying to sync messages on my iPhone (iOS 12.14.1) with 3 Macs (macOS 10.14.6) using Messages in iCloud. Two of the macs sync fully. But my Mac only partially syncs. Most of the messages prior to Aug 2018 sync OK. And very recent messages (e.g. yesterday) sync OK. But none of the message between Aug 2018 and yesterday show up on my Mac.

I double checked the setting on all three Macs. And tried all of the hints I’ve found online (e.g. disabling/enabling the Apple ID account, disabling/enabling Messages in iCloud, etc.) with no luck.

Is there a way to hose the partial sync on my Mac and start from scratch, without risk to the messages that are working fine on the other two Macs?

Thanks in advance - GetRealBro
 
For those having trouble syncing message between their iPhone and Mac(s)…

I finally got messages sent to/from my iPhone (12.4.1) to sync on three different Macs (10.14.6). But it wasn’t easy :( Here’s what worked in the end.

After setting up messages to sync on three different mac (4 accounts) ONE of the accounts synced correctly. So i used that mac/account to fix the others. On the good account, I opened all of the synced messages, one at a time, to get that mac to download all the messages into the ~/Library/Messages folder. Then I copied that “good Messages” folder to a shared server. Then on each Mac/account I quit Messages and deleted the contents of that account’s ~/Library/Messages folder.

Then AFTER restarting the Mac*, I copied the contents of the “good Messages” folder into the empty Messages folder for each account; opened Messages and checked the sync settings. In most, but not all, cases I had to Sign In when I opened Messages.

Ironically, I originally only wanted to sync Message between my iPhone and my 2018 MIni But I couldn’t get it to work until I got Messages to sync on a different Mac :(

GetRealBro

* The restart was necessary because macOS “appeared” to cache the synced messages and would still show the “old partially synced messages”, even when all of the contents of the Messages folder had been replaced.
 
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