new iphone 16, 2020 MacBook air, non-imessage texts won't sync

September 30, 2024 7:42 AM

I text with friends quite a lot and prefer to do it on a keyboard so I won't have huge muscular thumbs. On my iphone 11, photos would often send to fail to non-iphone-users and texts were slow. This pissed me off. Now it won't sync at all for non imessage texts, which is potentially a real problem. Is there a fix for this? I initiated a sync with the cloud in messages. Didn't do anything. I have googled, to no avail.
posted by less-of-course to Technology (3 answers total)

Best answer: I occasionally have this happen when i send to two friends who have android phones. Try signing out of iCloud and signing back in. That has usually fixed it for me.

Also, if you're able to install iOS 18, it supports the RCA standard for texts, so that could solve the issue.
posted by jonathanhughes at 7:49 AM on September 30 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I feel the same about wanting to text most of the time from my M1 MacBook Air rather than my 13 Mini and was frustrated by non-iMessages not appearing on the Air. I did eventually figure out how to make that happen. Pretty sure what worked was, on the iPhone, going to Settings>Messages>Text Message Forwarding and selecting the offered device - theAir - as a recipient. It worked for both sending and receiving.
posted by ClingClang at 7:58 AM on September 30 [1 favorite]

RCA should be RCS https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/ios-18-what-you-need-to-know-about-rcs-messaging-on-your-iphone/. But, yes, it helps Apple play nice with non-iOS phones, and it behaves more like other messaging apps.
posted by Mo Nickels at 1:17 PM on September 30 [1 favorite]