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Kentucky_Realtor
User level: Level 1 (4 points)

iPad will not text people that my iPhone will. Contacts are showing up Red.

I can text contacts freely from my phone, but about half of my contacts on my iPad are showing up as red when I try to start a message with them. This only started happening a week ago. I updated to the newest IOS after this problem was noticed, hoping it would resolve the issue, but it has not. I have turned it on/off. I have turned airplane mode on/off. I have gone to settings and toggled iMessages on/off. I have looked through my app settingss to see if something is amiss and nothing. Thoughts?

Posted on Oct 6, 2026 4:10 PM

2 replies

LotusPilot
User level: Level 10 (334,506 points)

Oct 6, 2026 4:46 PM in response to Kentucky_Realtor

If you have an iPhone - and both iPad and iPhone are signed-in to iCloud with the same AppleID - to send SMS/MMS messages (green bubbles) from your iPad you must explicitly enable Text Message Forwarding for your iPad on your iPhone...


On your iPhone:

Settings > Messages > Text Message Forwarding - set to ON - and explicitly enable your iPad from the list of devices.


Also ensure that Messages in iCloud is enabled on both your iPhone and iPad:

Settings > [Your Name / AppleID] > Messages - set to ON

6x6
User level: Level 7 (26,777 points)

Oct 6, 2026 4:35 PM in response to Kentucky_Realtor

I'm suspecting that your iPad cannot send regular SMS/RCS to your contacts that are not using iMessage (or have an Apple Account).


On your iPhone, go to Settings > Apps > Messages > Text Message Forwarding and make sure your iPad is allowed. If it is, disallow it, restart both devices and allow your iPad again.

Originally posted at discussions.apple.com/thread/256371602