iMessage and FaceTime not activating after iOS 26 update on iPhone 13 Pro Max

Hello!

I’m posting here because I’ve found success! After a few days of not being able to get iMessage or FaceTime to “activate”, I finally got it to work!

I was having the same issue as everyone else after the iOS26 update. If I knew people were having this problem, I don’t think I would have done the update so quickly.

Like everyone else, I looked online and followed the troubleshooting list *except* for signing in and out of my Apple account. I avoided this because I was afraid I could lose some data. Through all the trial and all errors, I even ended up sending Apple support the request to add my phone number to my account twice (once on my own and once after I finally managed to get a call in through to Apple support). The tech specialist I spoke to on the phone said that they usually process the request and send an email within 24 hrs, which I didn’t get from the first time I sent the request. I was working with Apple support yesterday so I checked today to see if I got an email regarding adding the phone number to my account and there was nothing.

So I finally buckled down and signed in and out of my Apple acount and it worked! Since I can understand how frustrating it is to be in this situation and seemingly waiting endlessly for a software update to fix the issue, which may or may not come for some time, etc. etc… I am posting here what I did in case it can miraculously help someone else! Fingers crossed 🤞🏻:

I think a lot of this is obvious, but there are a couple steps I took where you could deviate. As I don’t know if deviating matters or not, I’m sharing what I did specifically in case that is the difference to making this work or not!

To sign out of your Apple account:

• Go to Settings > Your name (your Apple account at the very top) > Sign Out (at the very bottom)
• Here, I followed the prompts to “Sign Out But Don’t Erase”
  • I turned off “Find My”
  • I opted to keep all the available data on my phone
• If you did it correctly, the last part should be to tap “Confirm and Sign Out”.

note: if you chose “Erase this iPhone”, the last part would be to tap “Sign Out” and then tap “Sign Out” one more time.

To restart iPhone:

I did this through Settings, not by pressing the power button and not by doing a force restart where you press the volume buttons before holding the power button.

• Go to Settings > General > Shut Down
• After the Screen turns black, press the power button and bring your phone back to life!

To sign back into your Apple account:

• Go back to Settings > Apple Account (that lovely white box and the blue circle design at the top)
• Choose to “Sign in Manually”. You’ll need to know your Apple ID email address and password. I didn’t choose to sign in through another device.
• Follow all the prompts and voilà!

Then go to the Messages settings to turn on iMessage and hopefully this time it’ll stick as it did for me!

I seriously hope this helps and that it isn’t just a one-off.

Good luck!

Alicia

FOUND A FIX FOR ME

Go to your iMessage toggle in settings>messages>iMessage and toggle it off. Toggle it back on and click the send and receive button directly underneath the toggle. Select your phone number and “delete” it from iMessage. This wont actually delete your number but itll resolve a glitch where there are two identical numbers listed. This worked for me previously, earlier in the update, and I tried everything to no avail but this worked. Definitely worth a shot because its quick and easy.

TLDR: open send and receive button in iMessage settings and delete your number then re active it.

Good luck!

I had the same issue. Well, similar. I tried signing out and in, resetting my network settings, restarting countless times to no avail. I looked at my iMessage settings and noticed my phone number was in twice. I removed one (there was one with a spinning dial and one without-- I removed the one without), and then suddenly iMessage and Facetime were back. Putting this out there in case anyone has my particular issue!

Same thing in Italy for me and for many with TIM and Wind but it seems that the problem occurs to many around the world. I think it's an iOS 26 bug that doesn't send the activation SMS to Apple, so much so that the number also disappears in the Apple Account contact list. I have a contact in Apple and I they aware but they invite me to report in more people that we can from: https://feedback.apple.com

Me, again!

I should say that I’m using an iPhone 12 Pro.

*I also want to add one more step to my previous post that may or may not be something helpful since I feel a large part of this is like throwing darts into the ether and hoping it hits a bullseye we cannot see… 😜:

• When turning “iMessage” on in settings (Settings > Apps > Messages, about the 4th white box down) and seeing the “Send & Receive” addresses pop up during activation, I quickly tapped it to get to the addresses page.
• Now in the addresses page (Settings > Apps > Messages > iMessage, it’s actually the “iMessage” page where you see all the contact addresses and numbers) I found new conversations were being started with my phone number. Here, I switched it to my Apple account email address by selecting it under “Start New Conversations From”.

For this morning’s problem, I also toggled RCS and MMS on and off and the messaging boxes remained “green”. But, I turned off “Send as Text Message” and my messages have returned to lovely Apple iMessage “blue”!

I think that even though I might have found a way to fix things on my phone, it’s probably not a permanent one and I’ll still need the fixes that will hopefully come in the next update.

Cheers~

Alicia

I am also having the same issue since updating to iOS 26 on iPhone 15 Pro Max on the day it was released as well as on an iPhone X on iOS 16.7.12 that got an update on the same day by Apple. I have been in contact with tier 2 support after doing the troubleshooting including the 24-36 hours wait times to no avail. Even tried to deregister and request to enable but got no response from Apple.

Tier 2 support seems to refuse or prolong the escalation to tier 3 even after providing SysDiagnose and evidences. Until now it is not working and have been constantly following up the support I am in contact with. The issue seems to have affected many users and could be something from Apple’s side. Here’s hoping they fix this soon as everything was working smoothly before they pushed these updates.

See my post about release of IOS 26.0.1. If you haven’t updated I recommend doing it.

I have no SIM card in my Wi-Fi only iPad Pro. Apple fixed this issue with IOS 26.0.1 release. On Monday the 29th.

I'm thinking some kind of sever issue on Apples side as this seems to be a wide spread issue

The IOS 26.0.1 fixed my iMessage issue on my iPad.

Can ask what carrier you have?

Hello!

I see there is an update available now, 26.0.1. Have any of you done this and seen success? I’m just curious!

~Alicia

For me I have an eSIM and my old sim was still in my phone i took it out but it still doesn’t work

I get the exact same thing on my iMac (Tahoe 26) and MacBook Pro (Sequoia 15.7), but my iPhone (Tahoe 26) is fine.

I spent 75 minutes on the phone with Apple, no solutions found.

Was told Senior management was going to call me back - that was an hour ago.

Reading that I am not the only one, I imagine senior management is having a chat with the software engineers about now.