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I thought with Mountain Lion that Messages are shown on both my Mac and iPhone (so I can start a chat on my iPhone and continue it on my Mac).

What is weird is that I seem to get an arbitrary set of messages on my Mac but it's definitely not fully in sync with the iPhone. A number of iPhone messages never show up on the Mac at all, or 1/2 of the conversation shows up.

Do I need to set something up specifically to make this work or is this as expected?

Dan J
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leora
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    Can you edit your question to clarify wether you want to know how it works in general or wether you want to solve a specific problem when sending iMessages? – Gerry Nov 05 '12 at 16:13
  • This might have some useful information for you. http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/59840/how-to-get-imessages-in-sync-across-iphone-ipad-and-mac – bassplayer7 Nov 05 '12 at 16:50
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    @leora How does it work? Not very well! – woz Nov 05 '12 at 17:03

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I think the source of your confusion is the difference between traditional text messages (SMS) and iMessages (Apple's own protocol).

Messages on the Mac doesn't support SMS. Any message you send or receive on your iPhone as SMS won't show up in Messages on the Mac.

If you send a message as an iMessage, though, then it'll show up on the Mac. Now here's where it gets confusing: even though iMessages are "data" and not "text," they can be sent between phone numbers. If you've got iPhones at both ends, a "text" sent from one to the other will be sent as an iMessage by default. These messages will then appear in Messages on the Mac.

daGUY
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  • ah, so basically i sort of need to know if the other people has an iphone . . is there any visual indication as this does get a bit confusing . . Ideally apple's tools would support both (at least to read by maybe converting ?) and the mac would be a perfect reflection of my iphone – leora Nov 05 '12 at 17:09
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    @leora Messages with blue bubbles on the iPhone will sync with your Mac. Messages with green bubbles on your iPhone are only available as SMS on the phone. – harpermd Nov 05 '12 at 17:21
  • This answer appears to be dated as of the writing of this comment (I get SMS in the Messages app on my Mac). If someone with more details could update the answer, that would be awesome. – Zach Nov 20 '18 at 20:39