new ios18/watchos11 wrinkle (cuz who reads the release notes?):
it’s been my custom to delete messages from my watch, mostly because they’re anyway unreadable (old eyes, eh?). did that today whilst waiting for a friend. later checked my phone and was shocked to find the messages were gone there, too.
checked the internets and found a number of irate comments on apple’s support site from users bitten by the same secret (cuz who reads the release notes?) feature update. also therein learned that deleting messages doesn’t actually delete them. who knew? recovered same. but of course, they’re all now back on my watch as well, as unwanted and unreadable as before. (be delighted if my watch just notified me of messages on the phone without actually copying them, but that’s probably too much to ask.)
if anyone knows a way of getting the pre-ios18&c behaviour back, i’d be chuffed …
There is a feature called “Messages in iCloud” which synchronizes your Messages app across all your devices via iCloud. It can be configured on a per-device basis.
When enabled:
Messages are backed up in iCloud and are sync’ed to all other devices that have “Messages in iCloud” enabled.
So deleting the message from one “in iCloud” device will cause it to disappear from all other “in iCloud” devices.
If disabled, then deleting a message will only delete it on the one device, and deletions performed on other “in iCloud” devices will not affect the non-iCloud device.
To configure this on iOS, go to Settings → Apple Account (your name at the top of Settings) → iCloud → Messages:
Deleting iMessages from the watch has always synced to the iPhone. I’m surprised you haven’t seen this behavior before - it’s been a part of watchOS and iOS forever.
Not so much SMS messages though- those don’t always sync.
As far as I know watchOS still does not support messages in iCloud but it’s in a symbiotic relationship with the phone for iMessages, so if they delete there, they delete on the watch as well. And vice versa.
Honestly I rarely actually open the messages app on my watch. If I take action on a message I’ve received, I do it from the notification. And I get notifications on my watch reliably as long, of course, as I am wearing it and my phone is in my pocket.
that’s incorrect. until ios18, i was able to delete messages from the watch with no effect on what was on the phone. thus my surprise when the apple droids introduced changed behaviour.
given past form from apple, that’s a good guess. but it wasn’t and isn’t turned on on my devices. the watch and phone are closely interconnected but prior to ios18 i could delete messages from the watch without losing them on my phone.
given the irate thread on apple support (quoted in my original post), i’m not the only user bitten by this behaviour change.
btw, is it in any of the release notes for the ios18/watchos11 updates? i scanned the notes posted on the developer’s site and found nowt. those aren’t the hoi polloi notes, though.
