I’ve been waiting for this feature for what seems like forever, ever since it was announced at the WWDC developer’s conference in June of last year. A year later, just a week before the 2018 conference, Apple has FINALLY rolled out Messages in iCloud with this week’s iOS 11.4 update.
What this means is that not only will you be able to receive a text message on both your iPhone and iPad (you can do that today, it usually works), but now when you read or delete a message on one device, it will be read or deleted on the other. No more having to delete notification texts in more than one place! This is because you can opt to store your Messages database in iCloud to be synced among all your iOS devices.
To enable this feature, simply update your iPhone and iPad software and enable Messages in iCloud. See the linked articles for details and other features of this great update. The Mac update should be coming soon to allow Messages on the Mac to also stay in sync, but for now this is limited to iOS devices (iPhones & iPads). Happy texting!
About the update:
https://www.imore.com/ios-updates
How to turn on Messages in iCloud:
https://www.imore.com/how-turn-messages-icloud