I had to restart my MacBookPro. I had a bunch of iMessages that were sent out between yesterday and today. They show up on my iPad and my iPhone normally.
For whatever the reason after I restarted all messages sent today disappeared from my macbook pro.
How do I get them back?
Salam Abouna
Did you try to sign out of iMessage and back on MBP?
Salam Mina,
Not at all. I just had the Mac auto-close everything as it always does. It turned on and only some messages came back, but the big portion of last night and up until 2pm are not coming up on the MBP.
I’ve checked all items and not sure why this happened.
Update - I quit iMessages and turned back on. All the messages that were working from 2pm-5:30pm disappeared.
Odd thing I just found…in iMessages preference, the box for “keep messages in iCloud” was unchecked.
I signed out and signed back in. Authentication Error. Then the app reset, auto-logged in and just says “Downloading messages from iCloud”
Great!
Just give it some time and it should get your messages back.
Let me know how it goes please.
Gave it a 3 hours so far, left my computer on the entire “still downloading from iCloud”
The strange thing whenever I am texting someone after I respond to them on my mac, the conversation disappears fully. (It stays on my phone, but disappears on the mac until they respond again)
A part of me wants to reformat/restart but don’t want to go through lots of hassle.
I’m still wondering if you tried signing out then sign in again?
Several times. My iPhone and iPad are perfectly fine. It’s the mac that’s the issue.
Also interesting bug as well.
Messages > Preferences
Enable this account is checked.
I tried to uncheck “messages in iCloud” (an attempt to see what’s going on)
When I try to uncheck it gives the option to Disable this device, all devices, or cancel. No matter how many times I press “this device only” it doesn’t accept. It’s stuck in some weird loop.
I tried going through a few tutorials online, in resetting the message and cleaning some things in the library. But so far, it looks like all messages from July 4-now are gone for some people.
I am going to try a Time Machine restore as a last resort, but want to give it an entire night, maybe something with “just work” and re-sync it all up
After several attempts of the following.
the conclusion I reached, there’s something off about Mojave and iMessage sync. If I turn off and disable all devices (Message>Preferences) from the Mac (because for some reason, it won’t allow to disable only “this” device) then everything begins to work normal again. But since it turns it off on all devices, I go back to my iPhone and turn on the iCloud sync again, which automatically re-enables the mac iMessage sync via icloud again, and then it breaks, gives an error, quits, and removes recent messages.
I heard in the Apple forums that this is supposedly fixed in the Catalina Beta, they have been aware of it since Mojave was released, but haven’t provided fixes, probably because not many users experience this error. I am not willing to mess around with a beta on my mac. I can wait till the final release.
For those who have this error, if you ever have additional fixes, let me know. But I hope the info helps out for anyone who has the same issue.
Hey everyone, if you’ve been following this thread. I tried just about every option I can think of to restore some kind of sync between my Mac and iPhone together for Messages.
In a nutshell…iPhone/iPad work great and sync up to iCloud for all my iMessages.
Macbook Pro used to be great and then in the last 3 weeks started acting up pretty badly. Removing texts from my Messages list (although they are not removed on my iPhone, just on the Mac). Also, my notification badges on my mac stopped working on Messages, it works for everything except Messages. I triple-checked all the settings.
So…I am left with 2 possible options and would love advice from the MPU community.
Option 1 - Reformat the whole macbook, fresh install, install all apps, etc all over again. Of course, if the app behavior continues, I will be irritated.
Option 2 - Create a 2nd user account, sign in with the same Apple ID, migrate everything over there, and see if the issue repeats. If the issue gets fixed…then I am not sure what to do…Do I delete the original account? Or do I transfer everything over to the 2nd account?
Thoughts?
Updating this thread if anyone ever experiences this same issue.
Reached out to Apple Support, went through all their suggestions. The final suggestion to try that I am reluctant on they want me to reinstall MacOS (without formatting the drive). I was told I will need to reinstall all my apps. I am trying to gather and make a list of what apps I have installed (not from the App Store) and any unique scripts I wrote or installed. Ugh…I am dreading this step already.
Alternatively, you could wait until macOS Catalina comes out (probably by late October), and see if the new OS fixes the issue as it eliminates or supersedes any old settings/plists that might be causing an issue. I had a Spotlight-related iOS problem that resolved by wiping my iPhone and reloading everything (and having to login into everything again, and re-associate my credit cards, etc) which was a huge pain, and when that same problem reoccurred I decided to wait a few weeks for the next version of iOS to come out, and that indeed fixed the problem.
I reached out to Apple, I followed all their steps.
Which then caused this to happen…it’s been 24 hours of this screen with no progress bar movement.
I then shared this with Apple Support and received the following message…
“…Thank you for giving that step a try. We’ve heard reports of the issue you’re describing, and it’s currently under review. We don’t have a solution at this time, but recommend that you keep your software up-to-date…”
So now…I have a broken Messages on the Mac. Thanks Apple!
This is a little old now, but may be helpful: https://512pixels.net/2016/03/fixing-an-endless-the-messages-database-is-bring-upgraded-dialog-box/
Thanks @ismh for the tip. I tried that. Messages are now working again, but still have that same weird behavior. It’s more worse now. lol.
I will be writing a text to someone on my Mac, and then as soon as I switch windows or open a link, that specific message gets taken away from my Mac.
My conclusion based on all the attempts there is some bug or glitch on the Mac that is preventing it from properly syncing to iCloud.
For now my solution is to have my iPad Pro and Keyboard next to me and use that for iMessage until something else works. Perhaps a clean install of Catalina (or the upgrade may just fix it)
