Photos in iMessage disappeared after ios13 update

I am experiencing the same: After the update to iOS 13.0, photos sent and received under iOS 12.x are not present under "info" in imessage (but they are if I scroll up through the message history). If I send or receive a photo after the update, they are present in the "info" section. Is this a known bug? Known fix?

Thought the 13.1.2 update would fix this issue, but my photos are still not displaying in the info section. The photos are still in the message thread. Currently using the iPhone 11 Pro, not sure if this matters at all either, but I'm not showing the "download links" like others have claimed.

Thanks.

Just a suggestion which you may have already tried, but on my phone if I click on the info icon at the top and scroll to the bottom it says x number of images in iCloud and there is an option to download them. Hope this helps

I’ve just installed the iOS 13 update and I was excited to see the new features, only to discover that all of my photos have disappeared. The strange thing about it

is that the names of all of my albums are still there, but none of my photos, which to me, means I should be able to get them back. My photos are very important to me... please help.

I just updated to iOS 13 today. This same issue happened to me. I went into iMessage, tapped the i to view shared photos, and in each conversation I have about 3-4 photos left. The rest have disappeared. Gone. Any solution yet?

Exact same issue. When click info only photos from past few weeks exist but when scroll through the messages all the photos are there. Seems like a simple fix to iOS 13.1 - who knows if they read this?!?

I have the same problem. Recently updated to 13.1.2 and all photos in all Messages conversations are gone from the details screen, but still display in the conversation. When I tap, "Download" as you suggest above, it initially shows, "Downloading", but then disappears and not only do my photos NOT display, the option to download them disappears.

Apple - what the heck is going on? I thought this problem was supposed to be fixed with 13.1.1! I didn't have this problem until I updated to 13.1.2.

BS, it is the update. These complaints weren’t made until the new update. I didn’t have the problem until the update. There have been over 200 people to bring this up on Apple Discussions. Anyone reading this right now, you need to send feedback to Apple:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/

Contact Apple support and voice your concern and the fact no one has been offered any real help or solution to this problem. Also, everyone, check your iMessage storage. In settings go to General > About > iPhone storage > Messages. You will see there it shows you how much GB of photos and videos are in the app. Mine shows over 15GB of media. This proves it is a display/access problem in iMessage. Everyone with the issue needs to keep contacting Apple and not give up. For their pricing this is unacceptable. And if they never help with this I will be complaining about Apple to everyone I know and will switch to another company for phone business.

The fix that worked for me is that described by @JMpls on page 17.

Restoring from the cloud did NOT work for me.

Restoring from the local backup on my computer did.

iOS has never been so buggy. It's still plagued with little problems. But at least I got my message attachments back - finally.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250644536?answerId=251658658022#251658658022

i do have an itunes backup, but not sure when the problem occurred so dunno which backup to restore from. i don't want to lose my current messages if i restore from an older backup.

after turning off imessage backup to icloud (setting) and doing the DFU update, a handful of photos i sent after the DFU show up in "details." however, it only shows 7 photos in details (i've sent >7 photos since the DFU) and they aren't all the most recent photos (1 photo is from 1yr ago, mb further back). but i'm not convinced this "fixed" my issues since a few photos are from before i tried these troubleshooting steps.

i also noticed a NEW issue today. when i go to a convo and try to send a photo or take a pic, the entire screen goes blank. no "back" button or "cancel" button. i confirmed my camera works. i even restarted my phone. same issue. then i forced the message app closed. i even tried on a group text and with other convos. the issue isnt isolated to one person or group vs individual messages. the feature just isnt available.

after another lengthy convo w/ my SA, he told me iOS 14 is being released tomorrow 9/16. engineering's response re my issue is to install iOS 14 and it *may* fix my issue. however, i read the iOS 14 release notes and there's no mention of it fixing imessage bugs so it likely won't work. fingers crossed though!

SA had also suggested i use a new ipad, erase it completely, then restore my old ipad backup onto it. he said it should merge any missing info. then i could restore my ipad backup onto my iphone. however, he also sent me https://support.apple.com/kb/HT204136 which says that restoring from backup is device-specific and won't solve our issue since imessages/photos doesn't transfer from diff devices when you restore from backup.

summary of my issues:

-"details" doesn't show message photo thumbnails

-if i try to "see all links"/download from icloud, it pretends to download the files, then the entire section ("attachments" disappears!

-if i try to "download all links"/"see all links," it pretends to download the files, then the entire section ("links") disappears!

-imessages only goes back until june 2018 even though my settings are to keep messages forever/delete never. when i check my ipad, it shows messages from 2012!

-scrolling through my message, i can "tap to download" an image. it shows it's downloading, but the generic icon appears. last week, after "tapping to dl," i could tap on the generic icon and my image would expand/open. now, it pretends to dl and the icon becomes unclickable

-indicator at the bottom of the messages app isn't present

-NEW: can't take photos/upload a photo from iphoto in imessages. the entire screen goes blank. i have to go to the camera and take photo or go to iphoto library, find the photo and then i can send via messages.

hopefully the ios 14 update (release 9/16) will fix my issues...but im not confident it will. the ios 14 release notes don't say anything about it fixing this problem

OK So I have another thread started about this issue too https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251914632

Anyways my latest update is its still broken however if you try sending a photo message or link to a contact you already have a broken info history for the info works for that later image which to me proves that basically the issue is a bug that breaks the historical link between the info area and old imessage media such as pictures/links etc ... its almost like it looses the historical timestamp after the update so you cant see any old info in the info area even though its physically there in the message !

Apple need to pull there heads together and stop fobbing the customers and support staff off

I am going to read your comments again soon. What I can ask is this: can you log into iCloud from going to the iCloud website on the internet on your computer? If so, when you click photos, does it show all of your photos and videos on there? Now this is direct access to iCloud, not the nonsense your phone is showing. If you can do this and you see the correct number of photos and videos in your cloud, I can explain to you how to back up to a flash drive. First you’ll have to get a flash drive that has the same amount or more of GB that your photos and videos in the cloud has. Then I can tell you how to copy everything onto it.

1. If you have an Apple computer, go to preferences on safari.
2. Select General.
3. On “file download location” you click it then you select the flash drive while it’s plugged in. Under this also select “manually” on the Remove download list items.
4. While on safari in your cloud on the photos and videos, manually select them - up to 1,000 items at a time and click the cloud with the downward arrow at the top right (it is right next to the trash icon. The cloud with the downward arrow will download the items directly to the flash drive). I’ve found that sometimes I have to do less than a 1,000 at a time for it to properly download. This will take a long time but ensures you have extra back up of images and videos in case you need it.

Here are the steps I took:

1. Plugged phone into Mac
2. Backed up phone through Finder (or iTunes) by hitting the Back Up Now button. (I had also forced a backup to iCloud right beforehand to be sure I had two current backups)
3. After backup, I selected the Restore iPhone button in the Finder window
4. I received a message that a newer version of iOS was available and selected yes to download it before the restore (my phone was already running the news iOS but I’m assuming it was downloading a local copy to my Mac)
5. After the download of iOS and the restore were complete, I selected Restore Backup in the Finder window and then selected my current backup (phone plugged into Mac this whole time)
6. I left the phone plugged into my Mac through the full Restore Backup process but could see pretty quickly that my Messages details were indexing properly. I left it plugged in until the next morning when I could see all indexing was complete

No OTA updates/restores/backups worked for me. The indexing only occurred properly when I did a full restore/backup using only my Mac. 

Hi,

I have 52GB in iCloud but 56GB photos stored on the phone...

I do recall when I initially updated to 13.0 from 12 I did have issues syncing photos from cloud to the phone, it took forever and kept stopping after every few hundred photos. That seems like it was resolved in a subsequent update.

Chakra675 I am going to be honest with you and you will need to try this. First of all, check Settings > iCloud and you should see all your photos in the cloud as well as your messages (I believe it was around 80GB). If you see that iCloud has all your photos you should be find to reset and restore the phone to the latest 13.2.3 update.

I believe in restoring your phone you will get all your photos re-downloaded from the cloud to the photos app. This also may resolve your indexing. I did reboot my phone during indexing and it's possible I interrupted it. Which is why i lost photos in my Messages app when updating from 13.2.2 to 12.2.3. I did another reset last night and have left the phone connected to power undisturbed.

You are currently worried about backing up your phone locally top your computer but what is the point? If not all the data has been downloaded to your phone what is the sense in making a incomplete backup?

You can login on icloud.com and verify your photos are in the cloud. The Photos are stored in the cloud regardless if your phone has partially downloaded or not, they are still there (unless you have explicitly deleted any photos on your phone, this would have sent the DELETE command to the iCloud server and would have removed them there)

However if they have just never shown up and did not download properly to begin with then they should still be there.

Think of it this way. You have a iPhone + Mac + iPad. All 3 devices are looking at the cloud to see whats there. If one device fails to properly download all the photos from the get-go the other 2 devices will still see them in the cloud untouched.

My suggestion to you is that:

If you have iCloud Photos + iCloud Messages Enabled the Photos/Messages are stored OUTSIDE of your iCloud Backup then you have nothing to worry about.

You have to remember your iCloud is broken down in different ways, think of it like Folders stored in the cloud and your device reaches out to these folders:

1. iCloud Backup - Settings / App Settings / App Data
2. iCloud Photos - Photo App Data
3. iCloud Messages - All Messages Data + Attachments
4. Health Data
5. Contacts
6. Mail
7. Notes
8. Calendars
9. News
10. Home
11. Safari

When you have iCloud Photos + Messages Enabled these are both stored in Separate "folders" in the cloud and kept outside of the "backup".

If you have Messages or iCloud Photos Disabled, these are stored inside the iCloud Backup.

Hello all!!

A FIX!

I upgraded from an X to an 11 and had this same FRUSTRATING issue and I was totally ****** as I had YEARS of threads with messages and there was no way I wanted to scroll through those to find pics!!

It is now fixed and I shall tell y’all what I did.

Two things, and I honestly don’t know which one fixed it but I am pretty sure it was the first one. Support suggested these things to me and I am so grateful but they didn’t even know if either would actually would work.

1. Settings / Siri & Search / Messages - I toggled everything OFF within the Messages. Then powered down the phone and powered it back on after a few minutes. I then went BACK to Siri & Search and toggled everything back ON. After a minutes a FEW photos started appearing and in SOME messages it would now at least show the photo area and it stated something like “More photos will show once they finish indexing” <Make sure you are connected to WiFi>

2 I updated the software to 13.4.1 (however the indexing of photos had already began before I did this)

It took about 12 hours but all my photos are now BACK in the “info” section on the messages.

Hope this helps.