How To Sync iMessage Conversations Between iOS Devices

According to Apple’s official iOS 5 features page, messages sent or received through iMessage should automatically sync between your devices. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always work right out of the box. Fortunately there is a simple way to make it work.

From Apple:

Start here, finish there
Begin a conversation on one iOS device and pick it up on another.

The issue is with which address is set as your Caller ID. By default, the iPhone is set to use your phone number as the caller ID, whereas the iPod touch and iPad are set to use your email address.

Setting your caller ID on all your devices to the same email address fixes this issue, and causes the syncing to begin working automatically. Here’s the step-by-step:

  • Open Settings.app
  • Scroll down & select Messages
  • Tap the Caller ID section
  • Make sure the primary email address you want to use is set as the Caller ID (it will have a checkmark next to it)

That’s all there is too it!  We hope this works for you.  I’m not sure why Apple chose to control the iMessage syncing in this way, but for those of you that have been having trouble, this works like a charm.

For more helpful tips, check out our full collection of tutorials by visiting our How-To category!

J. Glenn Künzler

Glenn is Managing Editor at MacTrast, and has been using a Mac since he bought his first MacBook Pro in 2006. He lives in a small town in Utah, enjoys bacon more than you can possibly imagine, and is severely addicted to pie.