Message sync puts messages in deleted folder .

[Fred Zed]

I’m trying to find out why I’m losing messages on my iPhone over the last month or so. Especially since migrating over via iPhone to iPhone last week. But this issue started a while ago, every time I sync my messages I end up with many messages in the recently deleted folder. Most if not all with just 1 day left before permanent deletion. I’ve checked all my two devices and they are set for keeping messages forever. My MacBook messages are set not to sync. Even when enabling iCloud sun for messages I can see the recently deleted messages populating in that folder. I press recover all then it populates again. Some messages in the recently deleted folder show thousands of messages between a participant however when pressing recover doesn’t recover them. And as the recently deleted folder populates I continue recovering messages but items still persist populating that folder until sync is complete.
Can anyone tell me what might be going on please ?

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Best guess is you're deleting messages on a different device to "Save space" and not realizing that'll sync over to the iPhone. A Watch possibly? Watches used to not "Sync" but they do now, on watchOS 11

 

[Fred Zed]

Best guess is you're deleting messages on a different device to "Save space" and not realizing that'll sync over to the iPhone. A Watch possibly? Watches used to not "Sync" but they do now, on watchOS 11

that’s the thing, I’m not deleting any messages. I very rarely even delete 2FA messages. Some of my threads even from this year have gone completely, saving grace being that my MacBook that doesn’t sync messages to the iCloud still has my messages intact. So I dare not enable iCloud for messages on the MacBook.

I’m currently using two iPhones , 14 and 16. Messages on iCloud for the 16 are turned off but are ok for the 14. When I tidy up and sync my only device the iPhone 14 to the iCloud and then attempt to turn on iCloud on the 16 not all the messages show on it. Ironically also it downloads the 2FA messages that I eventually deleted yesterday on the 14 which is synced to iCloud. My goal is simple for now, how can I get a carbon copy of the messages on the iPhone 14 onto the 16? I never have come across so much trouble with iCloud until recently. Not sure if ios18 beta trashed something at the time I was on it or perhaps my iPhone to iPhone transfer 14 to 16 over a week ago. Although the later did make my iCloud message storage shrink from 24GB to 890MB. Not sure what the relation is there because I did for once an iPhone to iPhone transfer. Message quantity still shows around the same value.

 

[Fred Zed]

Here’s an example of what messages sync is doing on my iPhone. I stop syncing messages in the iCloud then enable it. Doesn’t matter if it’s for a week or a few mins. I then enable messages in the iCloud and it starts to synchronize. So far so good, however during the synchronization process under the recently deleted tab, messages that I’ve never deleted keep populating with 1 day left for deletion. I recover the messages wait a few seconds and more messages are populated in the recently deleted folder which again I recover same contacts. This goes on and on for a bit and each time the number of messages set for deletion changes for the same contacts.
I’ve never deleted these messages. So why are they populating randomly during sync? And why after restoring them multiple times during one synchronization session do this reoccur again ? Anyone have a clue ?thanks.
Below screenshots are from one iCloud sync with messages.