Can I unlink phone number and email for iMessage?

Vertigo · 5 Feb 2013 at 11:36

Recently upgraded both my iPad and iPhone to iOS 6.1 (the phone was previously on 5.1.1).

I'd read that Apple had now linked your phone number and email together for iMessages so you can received them across devices. Sure enough, once everything was restored, I suddenly found any iMessages directed at my mobile phone number were also appearing on the iPad.

Problem is, I don't want this!

Now I can turn off iMessage completely on the iPad to disable it but what I don't seem to be able to do is unlink my phone number from iMessage on the iPad so I can still use it but only with my email address like it used to work. It's basically all or nothing now by the looks of things, or am I missing something?

Vertigo · 5 Feb 2013 at 11:45

Never mind, cracked it

kidscruff · 5 Feb 2013 at 23:10

What was the solution?

shine · 5 Feb 2013 at 23:47

On your iPad:

Settings - Messages - Send and Receive - Untick your phone number from the list of ID's that says you can be reached on.

That will stop messages addressed to your phone being sent to the iPad.

Vertigo · 13 Feb 2013 at 09:20

The problem was actually that I couldn't untick my phone number - the option was greyed out. The solution was to sign out of iMessage completely, then sign in again, at which point it prompts you for the numbers/addresses to use and then you can untick the phone number.

Part two of this saga however...

As I really don't want iMessage enabled at all on the iPad, I signed out of it completely and then set up restrictions to disable account changes so the Messages option in settings was actually disabled.

Then, yesterday, I updated my iPhone to iOS 6.1.1 and it automatically re-enabled iMessage on my iPad, with my phone number once again selected and iMessages started appearing there again.

Err, wtf Apple?! This is integration gone too far. I was merely updating my iPhone and Apple's systems/iCloud took it upon itself to automatically reconfigure iMessage on my iPad, with no confirmation from me and despite the settings even being locked out on the iPad and requiring a passcode to unlock! Totally ridiculous behaviour.