Suddenly a background picture for a group ‘chat’ disappeared. (Still there in iOS)
In one text chain my texts show as green text bubbles, but in another with the same person my texts show the normal blue Messages app bubbles. Everyone in both chains uses an iPhone. I understand that green means Messages thinks the texts are not within the MacOS universe, but why does it think this only sometimes for the same correspondent?
Not quite. Green means the message wasn’t sent via the iMessage service, but was instead sent using something else, like SMS or MMS.
An iPhone will send a message via SMS/MMS if it can’t access the iMessage server. For example, if it doesn’t have an Internet connection at the time, or if the server is temporarily down, or something else (network congestion, firewall, etc.) is preventing access.
It will also do so if the recipient doesn’t have access to the iMessage servers at the time you send the message. I remember years ago, when my daughter’s phone had a data limit, she’d disable cellular data on her phone, except for her most important apps. So messages to her would go out as SMS/MMS whenever she was away from a Wi-Fi hotspot.
A Mac doesn’t have direct access to the cellular network, but if it is in communication with an iPhone, it can send SMS/MMS via that phone. And if you are synchronizing Messages via iCloud, your Mac will also see any SMS/MMS you send/receive on the phone, even if your phone is not near your Mac at the time.
There is a setting for this on iPhone. Settings / Apps / Messages / Retry as Text Message. It probably defaults to on, though I’m not sure.
Also note that messages sent as RCS are green in the Messages app. I’m not sure, though, if Messages retries as RCS if iMessages cannot be sent or received. Maybe not?
This may not be related, but around May 1 I experienced a lot of issues with Messages on iOS as did some people I know in the region. Group chats were duplicated and “stole” the chat name while leaving the chat history with the older group (now only showing the participants vs a custom group name). Some groups seemed to only have the ability to send SMS/MMS. Some individual texts would fail the microsecond you hit “send” (usually to non-iPhone users). I have experienced the duplicating group chats once or twice before in the last 5-6 years, so it is rare, but disruptive.
I believe this was right after updating to iOS 18.7.8, but cannot say they are related due to the variety of participants and devices involved.
