Your Phone app shows duplicate sent messages

The WiFi off seems to generally resolve problem but there's some other background issue also.

I have been running with WiFi off and no dupes at all. I periodically have issues with signal either from cell provider (5G ATT) or cable internet provider (Spectrum/TWC) which will prompt me to toggle wifi on or off on occasion.

So I turned on WiFi one evening in bed and since not using laptop, no big deal, dupes not an issue.

Next morning, get up, forgot about WiFi being on, dupes started immediately.

Thinking I know how to fix this, turned WiFi off and dupes continued for some time.

This is a purely speculative thing here but a couple of observations. This was done by sending texts to myself via phone and Your Phone app on laptop.

• With WiFi off on phone (Samsung Note 9) if I send message via phone SMS TO MYSELF, there is no bounceback message on phone or Your Phone app. It leaves the phone but never returns.
• With WiFi off on phone and I send a message via the Your Phone laptop app, I see both the outgoing and return message on both phone SMS app which is the Samsung standard app, AND the Your Phone laptop app.

It seems like the Your Phone Companion (phone) app and the Your Phone laptop app maintain some sort of connection that I am at a loss to understand what that connection is, and how it is maintained.

So, right now, I have WiFi OFF on phone, WiFi ON, on laptop, AND BLUETOOTH OFF on both phone and laptop. 

How are the two connected if both WiFi and Bluetooth connections are theoretically severed?

I see this in the notification bar that you can make visible by swiping down from top of phone. It acts like a bluetooth connection but the two apps maintained their connection even after I had killed Bluetooth on both phone and laptop.

So how are the two devices connecting and staying connected without WiFi or Bluetooth?

Hey @JefferyAndre,

This is certainly a new twist on what's now an old problem -- thanks for sharing, since there are (or will be) others out there with the same issue.

Stay safe and sane!

Dave

I've tested wifi off for nearly 2 weeks now and not 1 dupe message. It's obvious there's an issue when a) another connection option is available, and/or b) when there's another app/service accessing the messages, i.e. live backup. Hope MS fixes this somehow.

I've been fighting with this problem since I upgraded to my Galaxy Note 10.  Before that, I was using Your Phone happily for many months on my S7.  I believe I finally isolated the difference.  I can now switch the problem on and off reliably, with 100% repeatability.  

The solution is simple, but fixing it on the back-end may not be.  I'm using the default Samsung Messages app on my phone.  Not because it's my preference, but because it works properly with my Galaxy Watch, and it's not significantly different from Google Messages (which I prefer).  That said, my Note 10 came with AT&T's Messages Backup & Sync feature enabled.  That appears to be the culprit, and while it's specific to AT&T, I'd bet other carriers have something similar.

I did NOT have that feature on my S7 (AT&T said it was too old and didn't support it - suspicious in and of itself).  Once I realized the problem started when I switched phones, it allowed me to start to narrow my search down.  I finally came across that and recalled that it explicitly wasn't enabled on my old phone. 

Flipping that service on/off toggles the duplicate message process on/off as well.

Here's my theory.  That service appears to be a real-time sync service that backs up the phone's message data.  My bet is that Your Phone's method of interacting with the phone's message data and the Backup & Sync service's method are ending up conflicting in some way, and duplicating data on the phone.  The actual outgoing message isn't duplicated - at least not in my experience (I've asked recipients many times).  It's just the data as seen on the phone - and therefore in Your Phone which appears to be reading/writing to that data on the phone.  It tells me that Your Phone is talking to the phone's message data service in a way that isn't actually going out to the carrier's messaging service - and so is Backup & Sync.

Just a theory, but what I KNOW is I can turn the problem on/off like a switch now.

Until this is addressed, I've switched to using SMS Backup & Restore to backup my messaging data.  It's not a real-time service, it's a scheduled backup, and unfortunately it doesn't do RCS messages when used with Samsung Messages.  I'll look more into that later today.  I hope this helps others out there.

Jeff A.

Portland Oregon

@ScottS21,

Thanks for the update, and for forwarding the info to the Microsoft guys.  I can't speak for everyone, but I certainly appreciate your efforts.  :-)

Stay happy, sane, and safe!

Dave