iMessage suddenly doesn't recognize another iPhone with blue

All of a sudden when I try to "text" (iMessage) my wife who also has an iPhone, her name comes up in gray instead of blue and when I send it fails and I have to select "Send as Text". Any thoughts?

rgabsa said:

All of a sudden when I try to "text" (iMessage) my wife who also has an iPhone, her name comes up in gray instead of blue and when I send it fails and I have to select "Send as Text". Any thoughts?

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Is she able to use iMessage to send to you? Are you able to iMessage anyone else?

Sounds like she has the service turned off on her phone.

I thought chas might be right, but I just disabled iMessage on my wife's iPhone and on the Mac, then disabled the option on my iPhone to send as SMS. My test message failed to deliver, but it stayed blue. I've never heard of the bubble being gray before. It's gray for incoming messages, not outgoing.

Do this... on both iPhones, open Settings, then Messages. Make sure iMessage is turned on, and optionally "Send as SMS" is on (that's for when iMessage fails). Also check the addresses in "Send & Receive" to make sure that you both don't have the same info in there for yourselves. Also make sure you have the correct contact information for each other in your own contact lists. Your own phone numbers and the email address used for iMessage should be stored.

Thanks! I think it's good now. Under her settings, iMessage wasn't turned on. She doesn't even know how to turn it off, but somehow it was. However, now she send me a text and it comes from her iCloud account. I think I know how to fix that but will let you know if I need help.