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Messages (one thing that kind of bugs me)

eclipse01

eclipse01

macrumors 68040
Original poster
For apple who seems to have every single device sync so well together, why can't they sync your messages up together? Is there a reason they don't??

like if I delete a text message thread on my phone I would think it should remove it from my ipad and my Apple watch as well.
 
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eclipse01 said:
For apple who seems to have every single device sync so well together, why can't they sync your messages up together? Is there a reason they don't??

like if I delete a text message thread on my phone I would think it should remove it from my ipad and my Apple watch as well.
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I believe it's essentially because of how iMessage is designed (mainly from privacy/security point of view)--there's no server/cloud component to it aside from actual sending and delivery of messages so once they are delivered they exist on the devices they are sent to and there's no link/sync to them beyond that.
 
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C DM said:
I believe it's essentially because of how iMessage is designed (mainly from privacy/security point of view)--there's no server/cloud component to it aside from actual sending and delivery of messages so once they are delivered they exist on the devices they are sent to and there's no link/sync to them beyond that.
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Not sure on that one; restore you iphone from an 'icloud' back up and you'll find all of your messages sync across. Therefore all imessages & in theory sms must be stored on apple servers (aslong as you have icloud active)
 
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AaronG123 said:
Not sure on that one; restore you iphone from an 'icloud' back up and you'll find all of your messages sync across. Therefore all imessages & in theory sms must be stored on apple servers (aslong as you have icloud active)
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They are in the backup itself. The messages aren't there if you simply login to your iCloud account, only if you make a backup and restore from it.
 
C DM said:
I believe it's essentially because of how iMessage is designed (mainly from privacy/security point of view)--there's no server/cloud component to it aside from actual sending and delivery of messages so once they are delivered they exist on the devices they are sent to and there's no link/sync to them beyond that.
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The delete action could be sent to your other devices for the action to be repeated on them. Like when you add a sticker to a message.
 
OP, whilst I understand the issue and sympathise, recently I accidentally deleted a conversation and I was glad I was able to look at some old messages on my Mac. So there are pros and cons to your idea. (I've suggested to Apple they add a delete confirmation step!)
 
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C DM said:
They are in the backup itself. The messages aren't there if you simply login to your iCloud account, only if you make a backup and restore from it.
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I know; not user accessible - but clearly being backed up within Apple's servers. Therefore there is a server element to it; resulting in this being very easy for Apple to implement. From a security aspect imessages are end to end encrypted; SMS not - but whether this becomes encrypted when an SMS is synced from one device to another using SMS forwarding is anyones guess.

@eclipse01 100% agree with you; no reason why this can not be implemented and should already be there - just a half baked feature & sync system. But I'm finding this lots lately with apple; take the below issues for example:

  • You can Export Apple Health Data from a device; but you can not natively import data.... this info is backed up by iCloud backup but you can not access unless you restore a phone.
  • Messages including imessage, sms & mms are backed up by iCloud Backups; but you can also only access if you restore a device.
In theory messages deletion should work the same way as iCloud Photo library works....
  • All messages synced across devices
  • When deleting message, confirmation stating from 'will be removed from all icloud devices'
  • Message goes into a 'Recently deleted messages' section
  • You then either have the chance to recover or permanently delete
 
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AaronG123 said:
I know; not user accessible - but clearly being backed up within Apple's servers. Therefore there is a server element to it; resulting in this being very easy for Apple to implement. From a security aspect imessages are end to end encrypted; SMS not - but whether this becomes encrypted when an SMS is synced from one device to another using SMS forwarding is anyones guess.

@eclipse01 100% agree with you; no reason why this can not be implemented and should already be there - just a half baked feature & sync system. But I'm finding this lots lately with apple; take the below issues for example:

  • You can Export Apple Health Data from a device; but you can not natively import data.... this info is backed up by iCloud backup but you can not access unless you restore a phone.
  • Messages including imessage, sms & mms are backed up by iCloud Backups; but you can also only access if you restore a device.
In theory messages deletion should work the same way as iCloud Photo library works....
  • All messages synced across devices
  • When deleting message, confirmation stating from 'will be removed from all icloud devices'
  • Message goes into a 'Recently deleted messages' section
  • You then either have the chance to recover or permanently delete
Click to expand...
There might be something that Apple could implement to provide some sync type of abilities that can do more than what is currently done without messages or information about them being stored on their servers, but that would be unrelated to and separate from messages being stored inside of a backup.
 
iMessage is the only mainstream messaging service to support end-to-end encryption on multiple devices and therein lies the problem. Sync is hard when you don't know what it is you have to sync...
 
Brookzy said:
iMessage is the only mainstream messaging service to support end-to-end encryption on multiple devices and therein lies the problem. Sync is hard when you don't know what it is you have to sync...
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Correct me if I'm wrong but they sync sticker location on messages no? They know which message to attach the sticker to on other devices. Perhaps each message is sent with a unique global ID which is then stored and then used to locate it on other devices when necessary.
 
GreyOS said:
Correct me if I'm wrong but they sync sticker location on messages no? They know which message to attach the sticker to on other devices. Perhaps each message is sent with a unique global ID which is then stored and then used to locate it on other devices when necessary.
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Is that not just part of the message, which is end-to-end encrypted? (And, if sent alone, the sticker and position is treated as though it were a message in that sense?)
 
Brookzy said:
Is that not just part of the message, which is end-to-end encrypted? (And, if sent alone, the sticker and position is treated as though it were a message in that sense?)
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Not sure I follow, could you rephrase maybe? 🙂
Al I mean is, the fact you can add stickers and like/react to old, existing messages means those old messages can be referenced and identified on other devices (devices of the people you message and also your secondary devices which are syncing the messages). Therefore you could imagine when you delete a message, this sending out a silent 'delete' message, referencing an old message, telling other devices to delete that message.

Apple don't do this, and it's probably far more complicated to implement than I make out, but I do not think that their end to end encryption model rules it out based on what I know.
 
GreyOS said:
Not sure I follow, could you rephrase maybe? 🙂
Al I mean is, the fact you can add stickers and like/react to old, existing messages means those old messages can be referenced and identified on other devices (devices of the people you message and also your secondary devices which are syncing the messages). Therefore you could imagine when you delete a message, this sending out a silent 'delete' message, referencing an old message, telling other devices to delete that message.
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Ah! Forgive me, I have totally misinterpreted the original post. Yes, that sounds totally plausible.

(For some reason I thought the original complaint was that sometimes messages do not appear on all devices for a period of time, or arrive in the wrong order, and the E2E encryption appears to be the limiting factor there. Sorry, it's late! 😕)
 
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One of the reasons I liked it when my ISP replaced POP mail with IMAP - deleting the email on 1 device deletes the email on ALL devices. Surely Apple can get there with iMessages?
 
RedOrchestra said:
One of the reasons I liked it when my ISP replaced POP mail with IMAP - deleting the email on 1 device deletes the email on ALL devices. Surely Apple can get there with iMessages?
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The concept there is that with IMAP everything is stored on the server, which isn't the case with iMessages (again mainly because of privacy and security that is part of it all).
 
GreyOS said:
OP, whilst I understand the issue and sympathise, recently I accidentally deleted a conversation and I was glad I was able to look at some old messages on my Mac. So there are pros and cons to your idea. (I've suggested to Apple they add a delete confirmation step!)
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THIS. There absolutely needs to be a "recently deleted" folder or some other way of recovering accidentally deleted messages. Every other built in app has that. It's so annoying that this isn't possible in Messages and it's messed me up more than once.
 
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