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So watchOS 11 now deletes messages on phone

Gator5000e

Gator5000e

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 27, 2018
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I just noticed this happening after I upgraded to watch 11 on my series 8. At first, I couldn’t figure out what was going on because I always delete most if not all of the messages from my watch. But I keep a lot of my messages on the phone. I don’t like having 30 full conversations on my watch. But as I was deleting them off my watch, as I normally do, all of a sudden they were no messages on my phone. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was going on. Now I know. I’m happy that some of you like this set up, but I for one am very disappointed and wished that Apple would at least give us the option to turn this feature off if we don’t want it. but of course, Apple knows what’s best for all of us and has decided to implement this without an option to turn it off. SMH.
 
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Thanks, but doing that puts them back on the watch as well which is where I want them deleted from. Apple should let us have the option to go back to the pre-watch 11 way.
 
I use the watch to get notifications of a new message and to get a quick look at the message without needing to pull out my phone. One I've seen the message on the watch, I have absolutely no need to keep it on the watch. It's done it's job. It let me see and read the message while my phone is tucked away or at a time that is not convenient for me to pull out. Up to now, I could delete the message from the watch knowing I will have it on my phone to deal with later. So I ask the opposite question. Why would I want to keep all messages on the watch when they are on my phone? I don't. I don't need them all in both devices. They are easier to see and find and deal with on the phone. More of a pain, for me anyway, on the watch. On the phone, I can see an entire screen of conversations. On the watch I see on line message at a time and have to scroll thru on a tiny screen.

But apparently some like this feature, like yourself. I say if this is an intended behavior (which was completely unannounced by Apple, BTW), then give us the option to go back to the way it was before 11. Shouldn't be hard for Apple to implement.
 
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Gator5000e said:
I use the watch to get notifications of a new message and to get a quick look at the message without needing to pull out my phone. One I've seen the message on the watch, I have absolutely no need to keep it on the watch. It's done it's job. It let me see and read the message while my phone is tucked away or at a time that is not convenient for me to pull out. Up to now, I could delete the message from the watch knowing I will have it on my phone to deal with later. So I ask the opposite question. Why would I want to keep all messages on the watch when they are on my phone? I don't. I don't need them all in both devices. They are easier to see and find and deal with on the phone. More of a pain, for me anyway, on the watch. On the phone, I can see an entire screen of conversations. On the watch I see on line message at a time and have to scroll thru on a tiny screen.

But apparently some like this feature, like yourself. I say if this is an intended behavior (which was completely unannounced by Apple, BTW), then give us the option to go back to the way it was before 11. Shouldn't be hard for Apple to implement.
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Oh I'm sorry, you say "delete the message": do you mean swiping away the notification? It syncs notifications between the watch and phone now?
 
What I am trying to say is I am deleting the message off the watch by swiping to the left on the message and then tapping the trash can and then getting the confirmation message are you sure you want to delete this conversation. I then tap yes.

Before 11, when I would get a notification on the watch that a message arrived (I get a ping/red dot/1 unread in the complication), I would tap on it to read it. Before 11, I could then delete the message knowing I could revisit the message on the phone. Now I can't do that because if I delete the actual message from the watch, it deletes the entire conversation from the phone. So now I have to keep hundreds of messages on my watch that I otherwise would not keep on the watch because of this behavior. Hope that makes sense.
 
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Gator5000e said:
What I am trying to say is I am deleting the message off the watch by swiping to the left on the message and then tapping the trash can and then getting the confirmation message are you sure you want to delete this conversation. I then tap yes.

Before 11, when I would get a notification on the watch that a message arrived (I get a ping/red dot/1 unread in the complication), I would tap on it to read it. Before 11, I could then delete the message knowing I could revisit the message on the phone. Now I can't do that because if I delete the actual message from the watch, it deletes the entire conversation from the phone. So now I have to keep hundreds of messages on my watch that I otherwise would not keep on the watch because of this behavior. Hope that makes sense.
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It does, thanks for clarifying.

It’s always annoying when software updates changes our workflow. I feel for ya!
 
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At least they could warn us in advance so we could decide if we wanted to update. But no.
 
Droid13 said:
Your approach to messages makes zero sense to me but I agree that you should be able to control your workflow.
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Why does it make zero sense? I use the watch to get a quick look at messages and notifications and to let me know there is something on my phone I need to look at, especially if I am in a meeting or somewhere else where I can't or don't want to pull out my phone. If I delete the message from my watch, I should be able to see it and deal with it later on my phone. The watch is a device to let me know a message arrived. I use my phone to deal with it. So again, how does that make zero sense.
 
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Gator5000e said:
Why does it make zero sense? I use the watch to get a quick look at messages and notifications and to let me know there is something on my phone I need to look at, especially if I am in a meeting or somewhere else where I can't or don't want to pull out my phone. If I delete the message from my watch, I should be able to see it and deal with it later on my phone. The watch is a device to let me know a message arrived. I use my phone to deal with it. So again, how does that make zero sense.
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But it's not like the messages take up space on your watch. They're just...there.
 
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Gator5000e said:
Why does it make zero sense? I use the watch to get a quick look at messages and notifications and to let me know there is something on my phone I need to look at, especially if I am in a meeting or somewhere else where I can't or don't want to pull out my phone. If I delete the message from my watch, I should be able to see it and deal with it later on my phone. The watch is a device to let me know a message arrived. I use my phone to deal with it. So again, how does that make zero sense.
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I take it you don’t have cellular?
 
Interesting. To me, it's always felt like a bug that when I deleted a conversation from one device, it stayed on all other devices. Like I'd delete a conversation on my iPad, then I'd have to delete it again on my iPhone, and then finally have to delete it from my second iPad. (I never even open up the Message app on my watch -- I suppose all my deleted conversations are still there, lol.) Changing this behavior so deleting a conversation from one device deletes it from all devices feels like a bug fix to me, and I'm guessing that's how it was viewed by Apple.
 
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Gator5000e said:
Why does it make zero sense? I use the watch to get a quick look at messages and notifications and to let me know there is something on my phone I need to look at, especially if I am in a meeting or somewhere else where I can't or don't want to pull out my phone. If I delete the message from my watch, I should be able to see it and deal with it later on my phone. The watch is a device to let me know a message arrived. I use my phone to deal with it. So again, how does that make zero sense.
Click to expand...

To me, if I delete a message on one device it should stay deleted on all of them.

Someone else on here has mentioned a mirroring setting; it might be there is a solution to the issue?
 
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Mirroring, as far as I understand it, only pertains to notifications, not to the actual messages.

As far as deleting from watch and phone, my recollection was when the watch first come out, it was billed as a way to quickly check notifications without having to pull out the phone. That is what I use it for. If I am in a meeting or doing something where I can't get to the phone, i just glance at the watch and see what's going on. I then delete the message on the watch. Before this update, when I deleted the message from the watch, that same message was always still on my phone for me to deal with later if I needed to or to keep for future reference. I could keep that message for as long as i wanted to and it was much easier to find that a message buried under lots of other messages. I'd keep it because it contains info i want to review later. Too difficult to do that form me on the watch.

For me, the watch screen is too small for me to make practical use of having lots and lots of messages to scroll through to find something, especially when it is much easier to do that on the phone where i can see a list of 8-9 conversations on the first screen or easily type in the search bar. There is no search bar on the watch messages app that I can see. I see two at most on my watch. Dealing with lots of messages on my watch is just impractical for me.

I should add that not all my messages are social in nature. Some are work related and I need to keep them for a while. But again, I would rather clear out the messages on the watch and keep them on the phone.

As to @TokyoKiller's question. No cellular. Would that make a difference?
 
If anyone cares, I contact support thru the Support app. It got escalated to whoever get these escalations. The long story short - they have gotten a bunch of support calls/incidents about this happening from unhappy folks. The guy I spoke with said it did not appear to be intended behavior, but he wasn't sure. He said he will escalate this to engineering. He said he could tell that, supposedly, engineering is working on this due to the other complaints but again he couldn't tell me if it's a bug or if it's a new way of doing things. I asked him to put in the report that if this is a new or intended behavior to request engineering add the option to turn it off this message syncing if the customer does not want this behavior. He said that is a good idea and submitted it.

The more folks that open a support ticket the more likely this will get done. The easiest way to do that is through the Support app on the iPhone. You can initially set up a secure chat with text of have them call you.

I was told they will email me when they reach a decision on this. I'm honestly not expecting much. But if I do get a response I will post it.
 
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Finally, been hoping for this behaviour for a long time. Surprised it never worked like this from earlier.

OP - its unfortunate and I feel for you since it messes up your workflow.
 
For those who like this feature, the support guy said that you can turn on iCloud syncing which will do the same thing. Who knows...but no matter what, it should be an option for those who don't want tons of messages on their watches but want to keep them on the phone.
 
Weird, that's what I've wanted (iCloud syncing), but have never seen that option on watchOS like you do on other Apple devices (iPad, Mac).
 
Gator5000e said:
For those who like this feature, the support guy said that you can turn on iCloud syncing which will do the same thing. Who knows...but no matter what, it should be an option for those who don't want tons of messages on their watches but want to keep them on the phone.
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Correct me if I’m wrong but couldn’t you literally just ignore the messages on your watch? I use the watch mainly to read notifications and maybe actually go into the messages app a couple of times a year but otherwise it may as well not exist to me but it’s still there regardless and isn’t doing any harm.
 
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Sure, but I'm too tightly wound to do that! ;) I mean that is what this scenario is making me do now. Either I forget about them and leave em all on the watch and consequently the phone, or I delete them from the watch and thus the phone. It's just Apple suddenly and without warning changes something that has been one way since the watch was first introduced.I got used to the way it was and I don't like the way it is. Is it a world problem? Of course not. Will I learn to live with it if Apple doesn't make any changes to it? I will no choice but to do so. But I would hope, at the very least that Apple introduces the option to go back to the way it was. But I am not holding my breath.
 
profets said:
Weird, that's what I've wanted (iCloud syncing), but have never seen that option on watchOS like you do on other Apple devices (iPad, Mac).
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Upon thinking about it I may have misunderstood what the tech was talking about. I confused iCloud syncing with iCloud message backup. Sorry.
 
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I'm with the OP and don't want this 'feature'...I use my Watch to keep track of just daily messages (maybe respond to ones that I can respond to on my Watch) but use my phone to respond.

I clear my Watch messages each day. Too many times in the past, I inadvertently messaged someone on my Watch (people I haven't talked to in days/weeks). This eliminates the risk a bit.
 
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