With the arrival of iOS 11.4 and macOS 10.13.5, I am looking forward to having messages up-to-date across all my Apple devices. The master set of messages lies on my iPhone which I have had the longest. My Mac only has messages from a certain point, and also has many messages shown in mixed up order.

I want to be able to use my iPhone message history as the 'master ' message history that will be downloaded to my mac. I fear that if iCloud tries to reconcile my iPhone and mac message history some data will be messed up. There are no messages that are on my mac that is not on my iPhone. So, what are the exact steps I can take for this?

(I am in the process of updating iPhone and Mac.)


My goodness! 200GB!? Unless you have chosen to put a gargantuan amount of data in your iCloud account, I'd recommend paying $.99 a month for 50GB and seeing if that isn't sufficient. I have 50GB and have used only 13.4GB so far: photos & videos, Mail, documents, backups, and Messages.


I would recommend updating your iPhone to iOS 11.4 and your Mac to macOS High Sierra 10.13.5 so that both devices can access the new feature called "Messages for iCloud". Messages for iCloud will backup your messages from your iPhone to the cloud so you can have them across all devices.

Keep in mind that Messages for iCloud will take up some storage space depending on the content within your messages. If you value the messages greatly then I recommend upgrading your iCloud storage to 200GB (or more if necessary). That will resolve this issue.

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