SMS messages not being sent or received seems intermittent.

By John Farina, 5 January, 2024

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hi folks,

I am posting this because of a friend's question to me and I am out of ideas. Here's the situation:

Device, iphone 8 ios 16 (can't recall the actual final software value).
My friend has several folks she texts with who do not have iPhones. therefore she has to use sms messaging which recently seems to have become intermittent in working.
We have looked at her phone and under Imessage the Send as SMS button is on as well as including her phone number in the send and receive section. These ideas were provided by apple accessibility.

Any thoughts? I have asked our friend to delete one of the messages to one of the sendeers and try doing it from scratch incase something were to have been currupted.

Thanks for any thoughts.

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Comments

By Brian on Thursday, January 4, 2024 - 18:35

Hi,

Try to adjust the following settings and give SMS another try. Some of these will say they are for iMessage, some will say SMS. Regardless, do the following:

1. Go to Settings > Messages.
2. Enable iMessage. If this is already enabled, proceed ahead.
3. Tap on 'Send and Receive' and make sure the phone number is checked.
4. Next, scroll down to 'Text Message Forwarding', disable this for now.
5. Next, disable 'Send Read Receipts'. (If already disabled, proceed ahead)
6. Next, enabled 'Send as SMS' and 'MMS Messaging'.
7. Disable 'Show Subject Field' and 'Character Count'.

Once all of that is complete, try to send a text message to someone (not) on iMessage i.e. someone on Android, etc. If there is still an issue, try to temporarily disable iMessage, and try again.

HTH. 😃