iOS 11.4 messages in the cloud

[Morac]

I’ve found Messages in iCloud is using a lot more storage than it should be. I’m pretty sure this is a side effect of having to upload the same data from multiple devices and it not knowing they are the same.

The amount of storage for messages on my iPhone before I enabled Messages in iCloud was about 100 MB. I’d say it was similar on my iPad.

The amount of storage in iCloud after I enabled it on my IPhone was about 120 MB and after enabling it on my iPad, about 240 MB, despite the messages being the same for the most part. I’m guessing this was done because it didn’t know if the messages were the same for both devices or not.

The amount of iCloud storage Messages is using now is 270 MB, with 95 MB of that being conversations. I’m pretty sure that 95 MB includes media attachments since one conversation listed is 57 MB which is nearly impossible to get with just text alone. That leaves around 175 MB of unexplained iCloud storage usage. That appears to be duplicate data, which for some reason is being kept around in iCloud.

Unlike other iCloud services there’s no way of verifying if that space is accurate since the local device no longer reports Message or attachment sizes.

 

[shankar2]

Anyone have this setup? One single icloud apple id for 2 devices each but different imessage id for 2 devices? Would imessage backup backup 2 imesssage ids conversations?

 

[davehutch]

Looking at my Mac and my iPhone at the moment. I deleted two conversations from my Mac about 20 minutes ago but they are still there on my iPhone. I've forced a sync on the Mac and done an iCloud backup on the iPhone.
No joy.
Should changes be immediate, the same as other iCloud changes are?

 

[Secondempire]

Looking at my Mac and my iPhone at the moment. I deleted two conversations from my Mac about 20 minutes ago but they are still there on my iPhone. I've forced a sync on the Mac and done an iCloud backup on the iPhone.
No joy.
Should changes be immediate, the same as other iCloud changes are?

Yes, deletions should sync immediately.

Make sure you have not selected to keep history when closing conversations, in Messages > Preferences > General. Some users report that option being enabled was the cause of deletions not syncing from Mac to iPhone (the iPhone has no corresponding setting, I believe).

 

[mas90guru]

From my experience these are the problematic syncs ( two iMac, two iPad, one iPhone):

I can't tell whether the sync problems are long-term or if they are related to the initial setup of sync from multiple iMacs, iOS devices.


1. Group iMessage where at least one member is SMS - I seem to be playing whack-a-mole on multiple devices
2. SMS messages (these DO sync but not reliable) - I have so many of these alerts that it's tough for me to specifically identify the issue so I've just been deleting them
3. Some single person iMessage
4. Using iOS to tag multiple messages and delete (no prompt to delete from all devices - not immediately apparent theses sync)

In some cases, there is a time lag for the sync so you need to keep the messages app open for a while to see if it eventually syncs.

Once I got my iPhone / Ipads in sync they seem to be staying that way

Some portion of the problem may be the initial sync. As some of the other devices were added to iCloud sync they probably uploaded all sorts of old SMS and iMessage - some of which had already been deleted by me on another device.

For my usage, I would have preferred a hidden option to clear all my iMessage history on all devices and start fresh.

 

[davehutch]

Yes, deletions should sync immediately.

Make sure you have not selected to keep history when closing conversations, in Messages > Preferences > General. Some users report that option being enabled was the cause of deletions not syncing from Mac to iPhone (the iPhone has no corresponding setting, I believe).

That did the trick, thanks

 

[fmalloy]

So if I turn it on, I will get a message that I don’t have enough storage to use it, and a prompt to buy more?

Yep! I turned on Messages in iCloud, and later the same day it told me my iCloud storage was now full, put a nice red "1" notification on my icon, and offered me to pay a storage upgrade fee. How nice of them!

On top of that, it claimed I was using 1.5GB of Messages iCloud storage, which conflicted with the 363MB quoted deeper in the iCloud Settings. Even after I deleted a whole bunch of messages with embedded videos, it took an entire day for that to get reflected in my iCloud Storage Usage meter.

What a sham. Half baked, and buggy. I turned it off. I only have an iPhone and MacBook. I can do a delete twice to save all the headache.

 

[walkerholt16]

I was concerned about running out of my 200gb of iCloud storage before I turned it on. And upgraded to the 2tb option.

But my iCloud storage freed up over 80gb!!!
And phone storage freed up maybe 6 gb.

Seems so weird. Other than that, everything has worked perfectly for me. But that seems not right

 

[acousticbiker]

Anyone have this setup? One single icloud apple id for 2 devices each but different imessage id for 2 devices? Would imessage backup backup 2 imesssage ids conversations?

I do too but have not yet tried messages in the cloud. Anyone know what happens in this situation?

 

[Dwalls90]

I do too but have not yet tried messages in the cloud. Anyone know what happens in this situation?

You can only sign into one iCloud account on an iPhone.. how would this work?

 

[acousticbiker]

You can only sign into one iCloud account on an iPhone.. how would this work?

The situation is I have two iPhones logged into the same iCloud account (each phone only signed into one iCloud account - the same one) but each phone has its own iMessage account (one phone uses same Apple ID for iMessage as iCloud, but 2nd phone uses a different Apple ID for iMessage account than iCloud)

 

[shankar2]

The situation is I have two iPhones logged into the same iCloud account (each phone only signed into one iCloud account - the same one) but each phone has its own iMessage account (one phone uses same Apple ID for iMessage as iCloud, but 2nd phone uses a different Apple ID for iMessage account than iCloud)

Nobody wants to try out this above configuration?

 

[acousticbiker]

Nobody wants to try out this above configuration?

Hmm, looks like it may not work when iCloud and iMessage email addresses are different:

https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/99609

 

[Morac]

Hmm, looks like it may not work when iCloud and iMessage email addresses are different:

https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/99609

It doesn’t. You need to use the say Apple ID for both iMessage and iCloud for Messages in the Cloud to work. Otherwise you’ll get an error message trying to turn it on.

 

[Irishappletech]

Maybe leave feedback on their website. Type Apple feedback into google and select iPhone and leave them feedback. If enough people do it they may change or fix it. For me it seems to work fine at least so far fingers cross it will stay that way. Also is text message forwarding turned on in iMessage settings maybe that’s why it’s giving issues. Try that too

 

[acousticbiker]

It doesn’t. You need to use the say Apple ID for both iMessage and iCloud for Messages in the Cloud to work. Otherwise you’ll get an error message trying to turn it on.

Thanks for sharing that. I would think it would work on my phone that has the same ID for iCloud and iMessage but not the other phone (that has different IDs for iCloud and iMessage)

 

[Irishappletech]

Ok so I think I (I think ) I figured out what the “conversations” tab means in iCloud _ iCloud storage _ messages _ conversations. The conversations showing here are the messages that are taking up most space in iCloud not all your messages that’s why the storage showing for “conversations” differ from the message storage showing in iCloud settings - manage storage -messages (witch storage amount beside them )

 

[Morac]

Ok so I think I (I think ) I figured out what the “conversations” tab means in iCloud _ iCloud storage _ messages _ conversations. The conversations showing here are the messages that are taking up most space in iCloud not all your messages that’s why the storage showing for “conversations” differ from the message storage showing in iCloud settings - manage storage -messages (witch storage amount beside them )

That doesn’t seem to be the case as one conversation takes up a few KB, which isn’t close to being one of the largest. I’m pretty sure it’s based on number of messages and not size.

The whole size thing is just wrong anyway. My 100 MB of messages is taking up 270 MB of space for some reason.

 

[GigabitEthernet]

The syncing just seems slow. I did a test and two conversations with two messages in each one, showed up on my Mac about 6 hours after the messages were sent/received on my iPhone. It is a real shame there is no way to see the progress of the syncing.

It seems after the initial progress bar you get when the feature is first turned on, you never get it again.

 

[HeadphoneAddict]

I would like to hear some more positive reports about this before I turn this feature on with my iPhone X, 7+, iPad mini 2, iPad Air 2, and MacBook Pro 15" retina.

(1) Should I turn it on with just one device and wait a day, and then turn it on with another device and wait a day, and so on and so on?

Or can I turn it on with all of my devices at the same time?

(2) Will this hopefully bring back an old message thread with my daughter, that was accidentally deleted from my phone but remained on my other devices? I had to start a new thread with my daughter on my primary device when it happened, but I was able to keep the old thread going on my other devices without losing the long history of messages that I wanted to keep.

 

[bookemdano]

I don't know if there is official guidance on thi

I would like to hear some more positive reports about this before I turn this feature on with my iPhone X, 7+, iPad mini 2, iPad Air 2, and MacBook Pro 15" retina.

(1) Should I turn it on with just one device and wait a day, and then turn it on with another device and wait a day, and so on and so on?

Or can I turn it on with all of my devices at the same time?

(2) Will this hopefully bring back an old message thread with my daughter, that was accidentally deleted from my phone but remained on my other devices? I had to start a new thread with my daughter on my primary device when it happened, but I was able to keep the old thread going on my other devices without losing the long history of messages that I wanted to keep.

I don't know if there is official guidance but I did it one device at a time with 1-2 days in between. I started with my iPhone, which for me has my oldest/most complete message history. Then the next day after it was done I did my MacBook Pro, waited for it to finish, then my iPad, etc. You may be able to switch em all on at the same time, but considering this feature seems, erm... "less than fully baked" I didn't want to befuddle it and risk screwing up my messages.

And yes, it *should* bring back that thread, but if it's that important to you I would grab a one-off backup from one of the devices that does have it (preferably a Mac because it's so easy to back up the Messages database on a Mac vs. an iOS device). That way, even if iCloud Messages screws something up you could always get it back.

 

[Morac]

(2) Will this hopefully bring back an old message thread with my daughter, that was accidentally deleted from my phone but remained on my other devices? I had to start a new thread with my daughter on my primary device when it happened, but I was able to keep the old thread going on my other devices without losing the long history of messages that I wanted to keep.

It resurrected some messages I deleted on one device and not the other a few days after I enabled it.

 

[chhhrrriiisss]

I turned this on yesterday and I'm running into a problem. My issue is that my MacBook now has all of my messages and message attachments included but my iPhone x now is missing chunks of messages. For instance todays messages are included and if I scroll up it jumps to April 27th but, some replies are missing. I don't see the progress bar anymore but if I try to turn off iMessage in the cloud on my iPhone it says, "Messages have not been fully downloaded to this phone." Do I just need to give it more time to process or is something wrong?

 

[HeadphoneAddict]

I would like to hear some more positive reports about this before I turn this feature on with my iPhone X, 7+, iPad mini 2, iPad Air 2, and MacBook Pro 15" retina.

(1) Should I turn it on with just one device and wait a day, and then turn it on with another device and wait a day, and so on and so on?

Or can I turn it on with all of my devices at the same time?

(2) Will this hopefully bring back an old message thread with my daughter, that was accidentally deleted from my phone but remained on my other devices? I had to start a new thread with my daughter on my primary device when it happened, but I was able to keep the old thread going on my other devices without losing the long history of messages that I wanted to keep.

I don't know if there is official guidance on thi

I don't know if there is official guidance but I did it one device at a time with 1-2 days in between. I started with my iPhone, which for me has my oldest/most complete message history. Then the next day after it was done I did my MacBook Pro, waited for it to finish, then my iPad, etc. You may be able to switch em all on at the same time, but considering this feature seems, erm... "less than fully baked" I didn't want to befuddle it and risk screwing up my messages.

And yes, it *should* bring back that thread, but if it's that important to you I would grab a one-off backup from one of the devices that does have it (preferably a Mac because it's so easy to back up the Messages database on a Mac vs. an iOS device). That way, even if iCloud Messages screws something up you could always get it back.

My other problem is I have an iPhone 6 as a backup, and it crashed and was locked up for the past 2 weeks and wasn't downloading any iMessages since 6/1/18 - so now that one is also incomplete. All iMessages between 6/1/18 and 6/11/18 are missing on the 6. That wont cause that one phone to remove those missing messages from my other devices, just because it failed to D/L them, right?

 

[bookemdano]

My other problem is I have an iPhone 6 as a backup, and it crashed and was locked up for the past 2 weeks and wasn't downloading any iMessages since 6/1/18 - so now that one is also incomplete. All iMessages between 6/1/18 and 6/11/18 are missing on the 6. That wont cause that one phone to remove those missing messages from my other devices, just because it failed to D/L them, right?

I don't think it will (but with the caveat that I don't work for Apple. I really can't believe they haven't released any documentation/guidance on how this feature actually works). My understanding is that syncing of deletes only goes into effect for deletions you make after enabling Messages in iCloud on your devices.

If you care a lot about these messages then I would do an unencrypted iTunes backup of the device that has them and save that backup for a while, just in case.