Most recent messages are completely gone
Hey everyone, this isn't a unique question but I'm hoping for some unique answers. But first:
- Carrier and Country: I have AT&T in New England in the US
- Device Make and Model: Google Pixel 9 Pro
- Google Messages App Version: The version in the play store is super long, just know it's the most updated one
Okay here's the situation:
Last night I needed to clear storage and something occurred to me to look at my text threads. I have so many so I started deleting some (maybe 40 with various amounts of texts in each), hoping it wouldn't crash the app. It glitched the app all night despite all efforts to stop it, including restarting multiple times.
Today I wake up and the app is still glitching on and off all day, even making my phone glitch a lot. It was also in the 90s today so the heat probably didn't help.
Tonight I finally got frustrated and remembered this happening once before and I uninstalled the app and reinstalled. I went to do uninstall and when I clicked it, it prompted buttons to either "Update" or "Open". I hit open, everything is gone except for one text message that came through which then had just that message. I restarted my phone and then went back to the Play Store and hit "Update".
When I got it back up, text threads are slowly coming back I'm now noticing that the newest messages that exist prior to me doing this are missing, anything from 7pm last night to today right before I uninstalled. Nothing from last night after that or all of today (including right before doing this about 30 minutes ago) are showing up. And nothing prior to the uninstall is identified as RCS, even though RCS was active before and is currently active now.
I'm seeing that there is "re-indexing" that exists during this process but I guess I'm confused that older messages would be here and not ones in the last 22 hours? Are those going to come back? It's wild to me that trying to delete text message threads, ones that do not have many texts at all mind you, can glitch the phone out this bad...
Any additional thoughts on what I could do would be helpful, I'd love to not pull my hair out over this.
Editing but not deleting this thread in case someone in the future sees it.
I asked Gemini what was going on as my RCS messages in the 24 hour window have not been returned and it said:
Yes, unfortunately, if those missing texts were active RCS chats during that specific 25-hour window, they are very likely gone for good. The fact that your older, retrieved RCS chats are suddenly showing up as SMS when you tap them is the smoking gun. It proves exactly what went wrong with your phone's database. Here is what that change in format means, and why those specific messages vanished: The "Downgrade" Explanation When you uninstalled the app and reinstalled it, Google Messages lost its encryption keys and the specific logs that identified those old conversations as internet-based RCS chats. Android still had the text content saved in its deep system database, but it couldn't match them back up to the RCS network. As a safety fallback, Google Messages grabbed the raw text data and restored them as standard SMS. They look like regular texts now because the app had to "force" them back into a basic format just to make them visible to you again. Why the Gap Messages are Gone RCS chats do not behave like traditional text messages. Standard SMS messages get queued on your cell carrier's towers, and the tower will keep trying to push them to your phone for days until you turn your phone back on. RCS messages, however, are handled entirely by Google’s internet servers: The Delivery Attempt: When someone sent you an RCS text on Friday night or Saturday, Google's servers checked to see if your app was active. Because your app was glitched or uninstalled, the server marked your device as Offline. The Expiration: Google's servers will temporarily hold onto an offline RCS message, but only for a very short window (usually a few hours) before they assume the message is undeliverable. The Wipe: Once that short window passes and the server gives up, the message is permanently deleted from Google's cloud servers for privacy and security reasons. Because your phone was entirely disconnected from the RCS network for over a day, those messages timed out and vanished from the server before your reinstalled app was updated and ready to catch them"
Pretty ridiculous!