Following Tuesday’s iOS 11.4 release, today Apple released the sixth iteration of macOS High Sierra, version 10.13.5. In addition ot many security, bug, and performance fixes, this update also brings Messages in iCloud to Mac.
To enable Messages in iCloud, open the Messages app and go to the Messages menu > Preferences.
If you have Messages in iCloud enabled on all of your devices:
- When your device gets low on storage it will remove the local copies of your messages, and retrieve them from iCloud as needed.
- If you delete a text message on one device it deletes everywhere.
- If you get a new device or erase an existing one and decide to not restore from a backup, all of your old texts will be there.
On each of your iOS devices you’ll need to go to Settings > tap your name > iCloud > turn on Messages.
Note that this will merge together all messages from all devices to keep them unified, and your messages and attachements will consume storage in your iCloud account. It may take several hours or even days to fully synchronize depending on the speed of your internet connection and size of your Messages library.
Though this stores your messages in your iCloud account and they consume space, if you have multiple iOS devices it may actually consume less space because you only have one copy of each message rather than one copy in each device’s backup file.
To update go to the Apple menu > App Store > Updates. If at first it says that there are no available updates just wait for 5 to 10 seconds and it might change.