iMessage Issues in iOS 17.0.2: Syncing, Pictures missing, History not loading, iMessage text threads not fully loading, iMessage search not working

[Morac]

I looked at mine. It’s the same. Says there’s more on my phone than iCloud. But that’s just wrong. Let’s see what the fix in iOS 17.1 does. Have to hope it fixes all this. You could try getting the 17.1 b2 or b3 and see but I’m not doing that. I’ve got enough bugs already!

17.1 will likely be out the week of October 23 so hopefully it fixes things.

On a side note I noticed there’s a photo from 2020 missing from my Mac’s Messages Photo “album” that I can see in the thread. I can search for the messages before and after it though. It’s just not showing as a photo. I saw it on my iPad which is how I knew it was missing from my Mac.

The whole Messages attachments are just a mess as only “saved” attachments show up in the “album” and get removed if the attachment is removed for whatever reason. The photos visible in message threads are for some reason stored and indexed separately. That or they get messed up when iCloud Messages is enabled.

 

[Maxell]

17.1 will likely be out the week of October 23 so hopefully it fixes things.

On a side note I noticed there’s a photo from 2020 missing from my Mac’s Messages Photo “album” that I can see in the thread. I can search for the messages before and after it though. It’s just not showing as a photo. I saw it on my iPad which is how I knew it was missing from my Mac.

The whole Messages attachments are just a mess as only “saved” attachments show up in the “album” and get removed if the attachment is removed for whatever reason. The photos visible in message threads are for some reason stored and indexed separately. That or they get messed up when iCloud Messages is enabled.

iMessage is a mess.

Now I see my VIP mailbox is broken. If I had one contact as VIP in the native mail app, all my emails show up in there. If I delete the contact, VIP mail
is empty. Search for VIP emails is broken too.

And car play messages don’t work with Siri for me

17.1 better fix all these and many more bugs

 

[somebuckaroo]

Don’t bother wiping it I did that numerous times. Nothing works. Search is broken in iMessage. Just have to wait for a fix. I have 3GB on my 15 pro and 12gb stuck in the cloud also going back years. Does your car play work? Mine does except I cannot use Siri for messages. Cannot send or reply to a message in the car. Very annoying

I just spoke with a Senior Advisor at Apple Support who identified Advanced Data Protection as the likely culprit. I'm curious if the people affected by the iMessage syncing issue have it enabled as well? She recommended disabling it and then toggling iMessage sync.

 

[Morac]

I just spoke with a Senior Advisor at Apple Support who identified Advanced Data Protection as the likely culprit. I'm curious if the people affected by the iMessage syncing issue have it enabled as well? She recommended disabling it and then toggling iMessage sync.

The support person was just trying to get you off the phone. Apple has already acknowledged there’s a problem.

 

[Morac]

Then go to where the photo was in the text thread and delete the text bubbles above where it was and below where it was. I’ve found that about 4 text bubbles above and below is usually enough. Do that. Then go to edit - upper left and permanently delete rather than wait 40 days. Do this and then wait 24 hours and the photo should disappear when. If you want, you can do the above steps and then go to messages, Siri and search and toggle all those off and then iMessage and toggle that off. Wait a couple of minutes and then toggle Siri and search back on and iMessage back on. This activates iMessage and then your photo should be gone. Try it and see

I noticed selecting the photos in the photo search highlighted a text bubble in the message thread so I tried deleting those texts (even though I didn’t want to) so I’ll see if that works. That seems like a bug though.

For others I ended up just deleting the entire message thread.

 

[Maxell]

I just spoke with a Senior Advisor at Apple Support who identified Advanced Data Protection as the likely culprit. I'm curious if the people affected by the iMessage syncing issue have it enabled as well? She recommended disabling it and then toggling iMessage sync.

I don’t have advanced data protection enabled and never have.

 

[Maxell]

I noticed selecting the photos in the photo search highlighted a text bubble in the message thread so I tried deleting those texts (even though I didn’t want to) so I’ll see if that works. That seems like a bug though.

For others I ended up just deleting the entire message thread.

That’s what I did too. Let’s see if deleting the text bubbles work. It did for me. I also deleted some entire threads

 

[Maxell]

The support person was just trying to get you off the phone. Apple has already acknowledged there’s a problem.

Also advanced data protection protects the back up only. iMessage is not part of the iCloud or any encrypted back up.

 

[GzyOnline]

LOTSSSSS of problems with iPhone 15 Pro Max+iOS 17 & Messages+Messages in iCloud...!!!

I restore my phone every few months and always Setup As New and download my data from iCloud (Photos, Messages, etc.); with everything new in 2023 from Apple, my Messages in iCloud have not fullly synced/downloaded to my 15ProMax; i've restored my device 4 times trying to resolve this, I have tried some troubleshooting i found on ytube (turn off iMessage+Messages in iCloud then turn them back on) and STILL, data is not fully syncing/downloading, super duper frustrating! I am looking at media (pics+videos) on my Macbook Pro and other devices that are logged into my iCloud account with Messages in iCloud sycned, and these things are missing on my 15ProMax; I've left my phone connected to the charger, even turned off Green Energy and Optimized Charging, for hours and days, and the data is simply not syncing/downloading, I HATE 2023 APPLE!

 

[NJFP]

I must be lucky. 13 pro and my messages are working. All too well though. For the last two days, when I picked up my phone in the morning, one months of old messages reappeared. Deleted them again. Annnnnd……….they were back this morning. On my iPad as well. Messages are syncing across all my platforms, Mac, iPad, iPhone, watch. I did send in a feedback report, hopefully this can be fixed along with all the above issues.

 

[Morac]

I restore my phone every few months and always Setup As New and download my data from iCloud…

Why would you do that? I do as few restores as possible because everyone one is a chance for things to go horribly wrong. This is especially true in x.0 and x.1 releases.

The one time I wiped my phone it somehow permanently broke Screentime syncing in my iCloud account.

That said 17.1 fixed most syncing problems I had. You just need to give it about a week as it takes a lot longer to index iCloud data than it used to.

 

[GDF]

I keep getting iMessage syching issues with my iPad 12.9 Pro running the most current iOS beta. I will delete messages on my iPad or iPhone, which deletes them everywhere, but then the messages end up coming back on my iPad. Has been happening several weeks now. Can’t figure out how to fix that. iPhone and Mac are fine.

 

[pstevem]

Update to the above, I just went and disabled iCloud messages, chose 'Disable and Download'. When I then went into Messages everything appeared going back to 2008 thus far!

This just worked for me. I had to restore my iPhone yesterday (after the latest iOS upgrade, touch screen stopped working) and everything worked except message histories. I thought I had tried this, but did it again and now have them all.

 

[Chrisjmv]

LOTSSSSS of problems with iPhone 15 Pro Max+iOS 17 & Messages+Messages in iCloud...!!!

I restore my phone every few months and always Setup As New and download my data from iCloud (Photos, Messages, etc.); with everything new in 2023 from Apple, my Messages in iCloud have not fullly synced/downloaded to my 15ProMax; i've restored my device 4 times trying to resolve this, I have tried some troubleshooting i found on ytube (turn off iMessage+Messages in iCloud then turn them back on) and STILL, data is not fully syncing/downloading, super duper frustrating! I am looking at media (pics+videos) on my Macbook Pro and other devices that are logged into my iCloud account with Messages in iCloud sycned, and these things are missing on my 15ProMax; I've left my phone connected to the charger, even turned off Green Energy and Optimized Charging, for hours and days, and the data is simply not syncing/downloading, I HATE 2023 APPLE!

Same here messages not downloading at all

 

[raziel101]

When I delete photos on my iPad or iPhone in a thread, it does not delete on the other devices. However, I have had this issue since iOS 15 and continue to have it to this day.

 

[Maxell]

I do the following to get all my messages and photos in iMessage back.

Go to messages, toggle off Siri and search , toggle off iMessage. Restart phone. Go back and toggle all those on. Then when iMessage activation is back, go to the iCloud link under your phone number and sign out and then back in and this seemed to start the download process for me. Leave phone plugged into power while doing the above and overnight while it downloads and sorts in the background.

 

[MrMaxwell]

Let's be honest iMessage needs a big overhaul when it comes to iCloud and syncing;
- let people archive messages offline (think loved ones who have passed or record keeping)
- allow some kind of editing / manipulation via iCloud.com
- more granular editing on iPhone eg delete all attachments from a single conversation

I have so many relatives / friends whose iMessage storage quota is up to 100GB because they cannot archive / edit / do what they want with historic and current iMessage...currently the best and only solution is to delete an entire conversation and be done with it.

 

[Maxell]

Let's be honest iMessage needs a big overhaul when it comes to iCloud and syncing;
- let people archive messages offline (think loved ones who have passed or record keeping)
- allow some kind of editing / manipulation via iCloud.com
- more granular editing on iPhone eg delete all attachments from a single conversation

I have so many relatives / friends whose iMessage storage quota is up to 100GB because they cannot archive / edit / do what they want with historic and current iMessage...currently the best and only solution is to delete an entire conversation and be done with it.

Agree. People don’t want iMessages as part of the back up for storage reasons but I would to be able to access messages via iCloud.com and be able to restore from there when needed. And be able to select which attachments or photos to delete from the iMessage gallery