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How to force iMessage to sync with iCloud on Mac

Are your messages not synced up between your Mac and iPhone or iPad? Read on for how to force iMessage to sync with iCloud on Mac.

When you have Messages in iCloud enabled on your Apple devices, your messages are kept up to date on each device, and you can also delete a message from one and it will be removed from all others.

However, particularly on Macs, due to them being shut down or offline more than iPhones and iPads, there can be some issues with iMessages staying synced.

If your Mac isn’t syncing messages automatically, you can force it to manually.

How to force iMessage to sync with iCloud on Mac

  1. Open Messages
  2. Click Messages in the menu bar and choose Preferences…
  3. Click the iMessage tab in the window
  4. To the right of Enable Messages in iCloud, click Sync Now
  5. Now in the bottom left corner of Messages, you’ll see a status bar if there are messages to sync.

Here’s how these steps look:

force iMessage sync iCloud on Mac walkthrough 1

Now select the iMessage tab:

force iMessage sync iCloud on Mac walkthrough 2

Back in the main window of the Messages app, you’ll see this in the bottom left corner if there are messages to sync:

force iMessage sync iCloud on Mac walkthrough 3

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