Experiencing Continuity Issues Between two MBP Retinas and an iPhone?
I use two Macs — and I have an iPhone 6 Plus. I’ve always been able to get Apple’s latest continuity feature to work between the iPhone, and any one of the two Macs — but never both at the same time. Further, I’ve never been able to get handoff to work between one mac to the other. Off and on, over the last two weeks, I dedicated my time and energy to getting continuity working between all devices properly.
First, what went wrong?
I suspect that my issues probably had something to do with my initial Mac setup. I used a TimeMachine backup from my first Mac as the source to set up the second Mac. Something about this procedure kept the iPhone from being able to distinguish between the two Macs. I’ve seen crazy behaviors. For example, under:
Settings → Messages → Text Message Forwarding 2 Devices >,
I have seen duplicate entries for my Mac device names. I’ve even seen device names toggle from one Mac to the other Mac after backing out of the list view, and immediately going back into the device list view.
No matter how carefully I logged out of iCloud, Messages, FaceTime, on all devices, rebooted, and signed back in with any possible combination you can imagine, handoff eventually broke while setting up the second device. I won’t even bother relating how many phone calls to AppleCare tech support, and the unproductive waste of time my last two hour appointment to the local Apple Store went.
So, here’s the fix the worked for me: Cobbling this and that together from the discussions forum from the Apple Support Communities.
- Log out of iCloud, Messages, FaceTime on all devices.
- On all MBPs, open KeyChain; Search for localDevice. Delete all
com.apple.ids: local device-AuthToken keys.
- Navigate to the hidden folder: ~/Library/Preferences. Delete these two plist files:
com.apple.ids.service.com.apple.madrid.plist
com.apple.imessage.bag.plist
- Finally, change your Apple ID Password. You can do this from My Apple ID.
It’s not necessary to change your Apple ID Password to get things working. I got handoff working flawlessly between all three devices without that step; but, I still had duplicate device names under Settings → Messages → Text Message Forwarding on my iPhone. Performing that step will clean up those ghosted device names.
Now, proceed to log into iCloud, on all devices. I also have Apple 2‑Step authentication turned on, so I had to generate app-specific passwords for Messages and FaceTime in order to additionally log into those apps on the laptops. Go through the normal settings to turn on handoff features you want shared between your devices — and all should work normally.
If your having issues with continuity, and these steps did not work for you, I’d love to know about it.
Thanks to your research I was able to solve the same issue without too much hassle!
I really appreciate your sharing it 🙂
Cheers,
Andy
Glad to know sharing this saved someone else the pains I went through. :-). Good deal
I had these same issues. Had a LOT of devices shown in forwarding from wiping my new Mac several times due to unrelated issues. However, only have 2 mac’s. I followed these steps. Now my iPhone is stuck at “Waiting for activation”. I see that there are only two devices listed (proper), however, when I try to enable them, no code is displayed on the device I’m trying to enable it on. Do you think it is because iMessage is stuck at “Waiting for activation”?
That could be the case … do you use 2 Step authentication by Apple?
No, it’s the one service that offers 2‑step that I use that I don’t have 2‑step setup for.
I did some searching and apparently my iMessage has to activate on my iPhone before I can get the code to show on the Mac’s. In my Send & Receive page on my iPhone, my phone # is not listed at all in the “Start new conversation from” section… So I believe that is my issue.
Actually, as I was typing this reply, my iMessage finished activating on my iPhone. Took about 3 hours. My phone # is now listed in the “Start new conversations from” section. I then went to enable text messaging forwarding and the code was displayed on each one of my Mac’s. Woohoo!!!
Thank you soooo much for this guide!!!
free_refil,
Glad you were able to solve your continuity issue. When it works it’s great; when it hangs … it can be a difficult to solve.
🙂
My 2 iPads We’re each happily talking to two separate accounts on my iMac but after update to iOS 8.4 they still mostly handoff after a fashion but the iMac doesn’t always display an icon on the dock and there is now never an icon on the iPad lock screens.
If you’ve updated to 8.4, has it had any effect?
Pete,
I have updated to iOS 8.4 on both my iPhone and iPad. All four devices ( 2 MBPs and iPad Air 2, and iPhone 6 plus) all seem to play well with no problems. Just tested.
Please let me know what you find — I’m interested.
Our iPads are an air 2 and a 4. Our phones are both 4S so they don’t come into it.
We are connected by family sharing and all five devices are signed into one iTunes account, otherwise we have two separate Apple id’s. We also share all our contacts from a third dummy Apple ID ( have at least stopped the battle of ‘me’ in contacts). Whether any that has an effect I don’t know. I have just noticed that wireless is set to on, on the Mac but not connected. It’s connected by LAN cable, so I’ll turn it off in case it’s interfering.
I’ll try your fix on one Mac account and the iPad 4 today and see what happens. Fingers crossed…
Great news!!!
My iPad 4 and the iMac are talking properly on my account.
Now for the air 2 and the wife’s account…
Thank you Richard — great advice
I’ll let you know if that succeeds
Glad everything is working for you Pete. 🙂
Hi, I was reluctant to log out of iCloud, namely because I would have to decide what to do with Photos.
So I only tried steps two and three, and instead of step one, I just signed off from iMessage and FaceTime on the two Macs. And it worked!
So now I still see my iPad (didn’t have problem with it) and finally both my MBP and iMac (which I migrated from one to another) in Text Message Forwarding.
I’ve just tested it and both SMS forwarding and calls forwarding work! And as a bonus, it also fixed Personal Hotspot which only showed up sometimes.
Thank you for the hints!
Good to know Josef … Glad, to learn that that step was not needed. Glad that everything is working for you. 🙂
Just a quick update. Having reached a point where things were almost working, I can now report that for no apparent reason everything is talking as it should.
Some self-repairs must have taken place!
Many thanks
Pete
Glad deal Pete. Glad all is working as it should.
Worked for me too. Thanks!
Good deal, Roshan. Glad it worked for you as well.
Richard — Thanks for this info. I’ve been trying to fix this problem on my two MacBook Pros since I purchased a new one last year… I wish I would have found this earlier. I had the same experience as Josef. I only had to sign out of iMessage on the two Macs that were conflicting and remove the files and keychain entries you listed. It was definitely caused by using Migration Assistant to copy my user account from my old Mac to my new one. Again, excellent work tracking this down and sharing the info!
Thanks for taking the time to comment Mike J. Glad all worked for you.
Still works! Thank you. This was driving me nuts, especially because I thought my only option was to create a new account on my new MBP.
It doesn’t work for me. :(. But my problem is a bit different: I have one iMac and one Macbook and under Settings → Messages → Text Message Forwarding on my iPhone I don’t have duplicate device but always only one sole device — the last signed in iCloud.
It works! It works!
I’m so sorry, I forgot sign out from facetime on the first step.
Thank a ton!
seems the days of apple software ‘just working’ are long gone… iPhone, 2 iPads, all iOS 10; macbookpro — sierra… sync of messages that used to work… now doesn’t. guessing it was a sierra or iOS 10 thing. and great that there is the work around, but it doesn’t look like a five minute task for 4 devices.
anyone remember when it was easy to look under the hood of the mac os…
Yes-s-s‑s! Finally!! It still works on iOS 10.3.3 and Mac OS 10.12.6. I have an iPhone 6, a 2015 MacBook Retina and a Mac Mini (Late 2012). Had the same problem with only one of the Macs showing up at a time. Followed all your steps, with the exception that I also did not sign out of iCloud, and did not need to change my password. After signing back in to everything and dismissing all the warnings and entering the code numbers into the iPhone, they both show up as well as my iPad. It wasn’t a five minute task, but it WAS a 10-minute task! Thanks for your hard work!
Mike, posted this because of all the headaches and large amount of time spent on this problem myself. Every now and then, someone like yourself benefits greatly from this article. So glad everything is working for you 🙂