Messages for El Capitan is broken. Is there a fix?

BiggStuu,

I have the same problem; I updated to OS X El Capitan Beta 10.11.1 yesterday, and, as soon as I finished the update, my Mac stopped sending and receiving text messages. I've logged out and in of my iCloud account—on both my Mac and iPhone—several times, but the issue was not resolved. I've turned off iMessage on my iPhone several times, but that changed nothing. For some unknown reason, I cannot delete the account in my Messages app: the minus button is grayed out.

Strangely, everything worked just fine prior to all of this. When I was using the previous build of OS X El Capitan, continuity and handoff worked just fine—and they still work, perhaps better than before. It's only Text Message Forwarding and Sending and Receiving messages on my Mac that no longer works, for whatever reason.

I've submitted feedback, but I don't know if Apple is aware of this issue.

Hi BiggStuu,

You could try having OS X re-create the Messages container for your user (this won't affect your actual messages) by moving the existing files as follows:

Close Messages and select Finder, then press shift+cmd+G and copy-paste in this path:

~/Library/Preferences/

From the search bar in the top-right of the Finder window, search for the following. In each case, copy all the files found to the Desktop (you may want to make a temporary folder for them there because there'll be quite a few)

com.apple.imservice

com.apple.imagent

com.apple.iChat

Then reopen Messages and test to see if the account is working properly now (it may be necessary to sign out of it and then sign in again). If it's fixed then you can trash the files on the Desktop (actually so long as there is no other issue with Messages, you can trash them anyway).

-Max

I'm having the same exact issue (i think). My problem started when I installed public release of el capitan on my MBP.

The individual iMessage conversations are showing the recipient as red color with the message "(***) ***-xxxx is not registered with iMessage.

I'm having the same issues. No iMessage. No handoff/continuity. Even after a clean reinstall. Happened when I installed the El Cap Beta.

Same issue here. I updated to El Capitan and Messages has not worked once sending or receiving. Any fixes?

Enable Text Forwarding did not appear on my iPhone's Settings -> Messages until I went to iCloud -> Click your AppleID -> Devices. Here I could see the Mac that I wanted to have the text forwarding enabled on. Then when I went back to Settings -> Messages the text forwarding was available and it worked again.

Be prepared when you click on your AppleID you will have to answer security questions you set who knows when. Super glad I updated to El Capitan to get a poorly ripped off version of snap and a load of problems...

Thanks! My messages are now being sent and received propery. 🙂

I tried this and it didn't seem to work.

This is happening to me as well.

Current Build: 10.11 (15A284)
Problem since Oct 7, 2015
'An error occured during authentication'

• When trying to sign-in & sign-out via Messenger > Preferences, I get: 'An error occured during authentication'
• Then it may or may not then prompt me to sign-in from the El Capitan Messenger set-up window that says "Sign up with your Apple ID to send unlimited mesages..bla bla" I enter my ID and password and I still get: 'An error occured during authentication'
• Then if I go to System Preferences > iCloud to see what's up, I get an unresponsive beachball where 'force quit' is the only option
• My phone has no problem sending and receiving
• I have 2-Factor authentication activated for my Apple ID

How can this be fixed?!?!

😕

Agreed. Same issue with no resolution in sight.

same here nothing has worked on my Mac Pro 4,1 with 10.11

Just started noticing messages problems stated above.

-can send messages, does not recieve.

problem started 10/19, no system update, program uninstall, or restart.

continues after installing all available updates.

MacBookPro5,5 10.11 Beta 15A278b