With iCloud Backup, there are two ways data is stored: *Apps Using iCloud* and *Backups*. The *Backups* portion is the equivalent of a full backup performed iTunes. *Apps Using iCloud* is app data written to the cloud storage, but accessible by apps and services outside of restoring your phone from a backup. On iOS, it is possible to have your Photo Library backed up with the system backup while keeping iCloud Photo Library feature turned off. When browsing the system backup options, Photo Library appears as an option but Messages does not. This leads me to believe that Messages could be excluded from the system backup. If iCloud Messages as a service is turned off, are Messages data still included in the iCloud full **system** backup of the phone?

Here's our situation: my daughter is trying to migrate from an old iPhone 7 to a (less-old) iPhone 12. The entire migration went without a hitch except for one giant-sized hitch: roughly half of her Message history does not show up on the new phone. On further investigation, we have determined the following: - iCloud Message syncing is turned On on the older phone. However, on that phone Messages are taking up 5.6 GB of storage, and in iCloud messages are only taking up 2.8 GB of storage. - On her Macbook Air (which also is signed in to the same iCloud account) Messages are taking up 2.8 GB of storage (same as in iCloud); and lots of the messages that she can see and read in her old phone do not show up in her Macbook Air. These missing messages appear to be scattered randomly throughout her message history (or at least we have not been able to find any pattern to which ones are missing), and (as far as we can tell) are the same messages that are not showing up in the iPhone 12. All of this seems to strongly suggest that the problem is that messages are not uploading from the old phone to iCloud. The most obvious thing to try next would be to turn off iCloud Message syncing on the iPhone 7 and then turn it back on again to see if that forces a resync. However, when we attempt to do that we get the "Disable and download?" prompt, and we are very leery of going down that path, because (shocking twist) we have been in this exact same situation before, with a different (even older) phone, and when we hit the "Disable and download?" button *all of the messages that had been locally stored but not backed up to iCloud were permanently deleted from the phone and could not be recovered*. (Parenthetically: I don't know if this is what "Disable and download?" is *supposed* to do, but we have also encountered other people online who have had the same experience, including some who have explicitly warned users not to trust Apple Store "Genius" employees, many of whom will tap that button without understanding that it has exactly the opposite effect of what is intended.) Just to complete the story, we have tried setting up the iPhone 12 three different ways: - From an iCloud backup -- this obviously did not work, since the iCloud backup is incomplete. - From a local backup on a computer. She backs up her phone regularly but apparently (and to my great frustration) those local backups don't contain her full Message history either, presumably because she has iCloud syncing turned on. - Using "Quick Start". This seemed like a promising idea — skip the iCloud middleman and transfer directly from one phone to the other! But when we opened the Messages app for the first time on the new phone it was initially empty, and started downloading messages from the server. So here is the ask: - Is there some way to force the old phone to resume syncing *without* tapping the dreaded 'Disable and download' button and risk losing all of her messages? - Alternatively, is there some way to force a local backup of the phone that contains her message library, again without tapping the D & D button? - (Getting increasingly desperate:) Is there some way (including, I don't know, a command-line tool or 3rd party app) to export her full Message library from the old phone and import them manually into the new phone? - If neither of those can be done, is there some way to export the entire Message library into some giant text archive or PDF file so that she can at least *keep* and *read* her old messages, even if outside of the Messages app itself? Any advice you can offer would be appreciated, we are at our wits' end with this. Practically her entire teenage social life was conducted inside Messages and she really does not want to suddenly lose half of it at one go.

After a (generally) successful migration from an old MBP (2014, Big Sur) to a new M2 MBA, I have several unread messages indicated by the notification badge in the dock on the iMessage icon. I've tried rebooting, logging out and back in, killall Dock, and even clicking on every single thread in the messages app, but nothing works. How do I get rid of the phantom messages? FWIW I don't have this issue on my phone connected to the same account.

I temporarily signed in with my Apple development account on a personal iPhone, which I also use to sign into a second iPhone (without a SIM) and a MacBook. Later, I signed out from the personal iPhone but realised that all my text messages in it ended up on the development iCloud, the second iPhone, and the MacBook, which is not what I wanted! I would like to keep those two accounts and devices separate. I turned off text message sync on the second iPhone and instructed it to delete all text messages from iCloud, but saw no option to erase them from iPhone as well. They appear to have been deleted from iCloud. However, these text messages still appear on the second iPhone and the MacBook, and there are lots of them, accumulated over years. Of course I can select those text messages one by one and delete them manually from the second iPhone and MacBook. As a last resort, I could also try a factory reset on iPhone, but would not like to do that on the MacBook because I spent days already setting it up. I'm wondering if there is a proper or faster way to do this? Thank you!

Instead of Toggle button for SMS forwarding (iOS Settings app > Apps > Messages > SMS Forwarding) in iPhone ,a grayed out text appears if the other Apple device is logged in to iCloud after the primary iPhone. Messages in iCloud are switched On for all devices, and all devices are on latest iOS, iPadOS, macOS. iMessage is also On. The toggle button appears for SMS forwarding (iOS Settings app > Apps > Messages > SMS Forwarding) in iPhone against any device logged in to Apple account in the following conditions: 1.) the iPhone is restored as new and logged on to the iCloud ID, after the other Apple device was logged in to iCloud with same ID. In other words, the iPhone under consideration and its Messages in iCloud are logged on in the last out of all other Apple devices (iPad, macBook, any other iPhone); or 2.) the messages in iCloud is toggled "Off" in the respective other Apple device. Perhaps the above condition (2) is emanating out of the Apple support article https://support.apple.com/en-in/102545 , but the condition at (1) definitely does not seem to have any basis. The behaviour at (1) seems a bug.

iCloud family sharing: is there any notifications to others member if you start/end share your geo location?

I've noticed a peculiar issue with my iCloud account. Despite regularly deleting messages and emptying the trash, I consistently have 518 messages in iCloud that occupy space but aren't visible anywhere in my account. Here's what I've observed: 1. This number (518) remains constant month after month. 2. I've tried deleting all messages and emptying the trash. 3. I changed the setting from "Keep for 30 days" to "Keep for 1 year" to force the old deletion pop-up. 4. I've monitored the number of messages for several months, always returning to 518. My theory is that there might be a second, hidden trash in iCloud for data recovery after deleting from the system trash. The process would be: App > Trash > iCloud (hidden) > Permanent deletion after 30 days Has anyone else experienced this? Do you know how to reset this to zero? Would disabling Messages in iCloud completely or using a web option help? Any insights or solutions would be greatly appreciated!

I have all of my messages stored in iCloud, but for some reason they’re still taking up SSD storage on my Mac. This behavior doesn’t happen on my iPhone, but it does on my Mac and I’m not sure why. If they’re in iCloud, why are they still taking up the internal storage on my Mac? It seems strange that my iPhone doesn’t store messages on its internal storage, but my Mac does. Is there a way to prevent this from happening on my Mac somehow?

It seems that with my computer, I can only send emails from my iCloud account, but I want to be able to text on my computer from my iCloud account. How do I do this?

On my iPhone 13, some iMessage conversations have nearly 100 MB of images. For one conversation, I went to "Attachments" and manually deleted every single photo, but then a few days later noticed all the ones I deleted were back, as if I never deleted them. How do I actually delete the attachments permanently? (iPhone 13, iOS 16.6)

In the macOS messages app, there is an option called "Keep messages" that allows you to change the duration for which messages are kept. What is unclear to me is: does this affect my messages stored in iCloud as well or just the local copies on my Mac? I'd like them to stay in the cloud but not my Mac so as to not fill up my MBP's tiny 124 GB HD. I see the option is also there in the iOS Messages settings. Is the choice synced across devices or again does this only affect local device storage and not iCloud.

On MacBook, what's the difference between these two settings: * *Messages → Settings → iMessage → Enable Messages in iCloud* * *MacBook System Settings → Your Name → iCloud → iCloud Drive → Options (Next to Apps Syncing to iCloud Drive) > Messages* (Checkbox)? When I turn off one of these settings in one of the above processes, it doesn't turn off the other. That means they're two separate and distinct settings, right? What is controlled by each of these two settings? Here is a screenshot:

I can’t back up my iPhone. I’ve removed many of my videos and photos from my iPhone and from my messages, but iCloud shows the largest storage is messages - 3Gb. When I click on messages, however, top conversations shows 0kb. How do I reclaim my space?

I use google contacts on my iPhone and previous mac, but recently switched to a new mac. After [linking the iCloud account to messages on mac](https://support.apple.com/guide/messages/access-messages-apple-devices-icht5b5d1e63/mac#:~:text=In%20the%20Messages%20app%20on,all%20of%20them%20to%20appear.) , and adding [google contacts to the internet accounts](https://support.apple.com/guide/contacts/add-contacts-from-icloud-google-and-more-adrb7e5aaa2a/mac) , I managed to get it to show the message history, but it's still not showing the contact names. Closing and opening, updating mac, and restarting the system did not help.

I just received a text in iMessage on my mac. This is quite surprising, as I haven't owned an iPhone since 2014, and I subsequently disabled iMessage on all the macs I have owned since. As can also be seen in the screenshot. "Aktiver Meldinger i iCloud" is Norwegian and means "Activate Messages in iCloud". So, given that background, how is it that I suddenly receive messages that would otherwise be sent as SMS?

What does iCloud sync in Messages do? I'd have thought that it was a way of ensuring that messages on one of my devises appear on the others, but that's not how it works. For example if I have Messages off for a bit on my Mac, none of the messages sent or received on my other devices ever show up in Messages on my Mac. So "sync" must be doing something else. What is that and what is accomplished by enabling enabling it? What would happen if I disabled it?

I want a complete local backup of all my iMessages. There are several apps that allow you to backup iMessages, but only what already exists on a device, which is only be a subset of the complete set stored in iCloud. Neither iCloud backups nor computer backups include iMessages from iCloud . I have 16GB of messages according to iCloud, but my phone only reports 8GB. Is there a way to force my phone or (ideally) Mac to download the entire message history, so it can be archived?

Most emails I’ve been receiving from my business partners are either ending up in my junk mail or archive folder. I email these individuals daily and they are on my favorites. Oddly, all of my emails are going into their spam folders too? This cannot be coincidental and certain that someone has sent some kind of spyware or Trojan into our accounts. Any recommendations on finding out what we can do about this situation.

In the preferences for Messages.app I have set Keep Messages to _Forever_ : But when scrolling back in a long-lived conversation it is hanging at 90 days: I am assuming that were not a coincidence .. So is there some undocumented hard-limit that is coming into play here? Is there any way to access those older threads?

I try not to use iCloud. I like to back up all my photos and files manually into my external hard drives, so I don't have any use for it. But over the last 2 months, I've been getting bombarded by alerts, e-mails, pop-ups, notifications, and every other possible method to warn me that my iCloud is almost full. I finally checked my iCloud storage, and it says 4.53GB of it is messages. I don't want a cloud backup of my texts. I use iMessage on my iPhone and my Macbook. How do I stop iCloud storing these messages?