Photos in iMessage disappeared after ios13 update

Okay so yesterday I re-downloaded messages from icloud and everything for the first time cleanly got indexed and throughout the entire all my message attachments were there. But today when I received a new photo everything is gone again :(

I restarted my device and turned off messages from my icloud and turned it back on after 30 secs, I opened the messages app and saw the “more photos will be shown after indexing”, then I plugged my device in and connected it to wifi, after around 8 hours they were there the next morning. But they’re gone again :(

Did you get it resolved, I just updated from the 7plus to the 11 pro max and have spent over 20 hrs since Dec 20 with the SAME issue. I have nothing back and I am being told the same thing, escalated to engineer and no info avail.

dear people, you are my last hope (and YOU apple- shame on you!) i have the same problem. i was only writing i-messages with one person and exchanged tausends of photos with him. he is not among us anymore and all i have: are those memories. messages are there but pictures and screen shots are gone! it makes me sick in my stomach. i already have enough problems. today is 21.01.2020. i am using iphone 6 (don’t laugh- i do not have the money for a “better” one and even if i had, i would be happier if i could build a home for every homeless animal out there.) my phone has 12.4.4 update. and if i try to do a “newest “update” it says: your software IS up to date. yeah, right! pllllleeeeeaaase help. i am desperate (and living in austria- which makes me even more desperate). thank you all for your help. if you are kind enough to share it with me? pretty please.

I was hoping with the 13.3.1 update today that it would be fixed, but I'm still not seeing all my pictures. I've repeatedly tried the "download from icloud" thing but it doesn't seem to actually do anything..

Anybody seeing anything different with the update?

So if I did a full DFU restore,

setup my phone as new,

re-login to iCloud,

and toggle messages to [ON],

I should wait two days and in the mean time nothing should show up in the “i” section of the messages until indexing is finished?

My messages are taking up 20GB in iCloud storage and mine just populated from a restore done roughly 36 hours ago.

to be clear.. I DFU restored (not updated) to iOS 13.3 with iTunes, setup my phone as a new phone and logged into iCloud.

I did NOT restore from a backup. After getting to the home screen I toggled all my usual iCloud settings on and waited/ used the phone as usual.

However it is odd, my phone storage says messages is taking up 7.5GB, but iCloud says 20GB

either way, everything is now downloaded and the info section of messages now works

thanks th1ef!

Update: I was online with Apple support chat this morning for quite awhile. Got bumped up from the first person, who told me to log out of imessage and back into it, which didn't work, so then onwards and upwards to a senior advisor person, who suggested one thing and then said it needed to get sent to engineering to have them look at it. I now have a phone appt for tonight so I get to talk to someone about it for hours ad-nauseum, only for them to probably say, 'well that's weird'. I'm on 13.3.1 and am frustrated as ****. I wish I never got this new phone!!

From what I have been told from the senior advisor I been in touch with over the last weeks is that nothing we do like signing out and signing in resetting all settings or whatever will not work. They took a diagnostic of my phone with screen shots and screen recordings. They are still working on an update.

Thanks for your update!! I can only hope if more people contact support directly it will light a fire to get them to fix this soon. I usually don't do the incremental updates until I talk to other people to see if it was smooth, but the phone updated automatically out of the box so I was stuck with it right out of the gates.

Ypure welcome... It frustrating!!! My phone updated out of the box as well. I lost tons of pictures of my kids. My boyfriends phone updated the other week and he is ******!!! We can only hope that they fix it and all of our pictures return.

I was contacted today by the SA since dec 20 for my same case #

i was asked to do the update and told for “some” the photos are indexing

does anyone have good news!? Did 13.3.1 work and index all the photos back?

Can you give step by step instructions? I don’t know all the acronyms .... I am sorry to ask but I have done support since 12.20 and today the SA. Called and said engineering had finished with my case and diagnostic and they wanted me to update my phone to the brand new update today and I am leery to do it.

I have 169gb messages in cloud and only 30gb on the phone. I have thousands of client files in messages as pictures so I can easily access when sitting w a client and now poof, the “I” info doesn’t access any of them.

*If you follow what I did, your phone will be updated to the latest version

I would only restore as a last resort in the event that Apple engineers cannot fix the issue.*

Also for context I restored to iOS 13.3 and had success, not 13.3.1(the latest as of now) so while it’s always a good idea to stay on the latest firmware and worth a shot I doubt that is the actual problem since it resolved itself on 13.3

Well, for starters i only have 20GB in iCloud storage, nowhere near 169GB. So the process could take considerably longer for your messages content. Potentially 2 weeks since 20GB took just under 2 days.

Also regarding the 169-30GB difference mine also shows a large difference 20GB icloud-7.5GB phone storage. I think that the attachments in messages are now classified under photos or not at all on the phone. because mine is showing 7.5GB but everything is indeed there.

If you haven’t tried waiting two weeks after toggling messages or restoring your phone. Perhaps just try waiting that amount of time and see if it fixes itself.

****You should note that if you restore, all of your settings will be lost, all of your apps will need to be re-downloaded / setup. (Some apps may not require this if they have separate toggles in iCloud settings) Essentially your phone will be brand new and blank except for the toggles you see in iCloud options.****

Also if the information is that important I would do a backup using iTunes and iCloud before trying anything. This way you can revert to your current setup if you find that you need something that was not synced to iCloud.

With that out of the way a DFU (Device Firmware Update) restore (to my knowledge) bypasses the phones software for putting it into recovery mode and is useful if your phone is not working at all. It’s mainly just a habit but not usually necessary to use. There are plenty of tutorials on how to enter your phone into DFU mode online if you’d like to use it for recovery.

The important parts of what I did to get my messages info section back were:

-Backup with iTunes and iCloud in case something goes wrong.

-Put phone into recovery mode

-Press ”restore” once the iTunes detects the phone.

-Wait for it to finish the restore then handle the rest of the setup on the phone itself.

-When asked if you want to recover your data from a backup, another phone, etc.. choose setup as new phone

-Complete the setup as normal

-Once on the home screen, look at your iCloud settings and enable everything you typically use (Except messages)

-Wait for everything to sync back (notes ,photos ,mail, etc..)

-after your phone is *completely finished* downloading everything enable messages and wait.

Again for you that may take longer than 2 weeks because of the amount of data you have. I would definitely bank on apples engineers before trying the steps that solved my problem

This is just what I did. Every situation is different and this may not work for you. However with the iTunes and iCloud backups you should be safe since you can restore to them if needed.

I talked on the phone to my SA last night - who was amaaaazing by the way - and she is forwarding to engineering. I am waiting til I hear back from her, but all I know is everything was fine before 13.3.1. She had no solutions, said she had quite a few people with the same issue..but no solution yet. I’m telling people to avoid 13.3.1 based on my experience.