Photos in iMessage disappeared after ios13 update

You’re welcome. I hope the restore from local backup works for you. I noticed my pictures indexing properly pretty quickly after...and just left the phone plugged in. Good luck.

Everyone contact Apple support. This is unacceptable.

Just did the restore. Looks much better so far. Not done updating but messages looking complete now.

I did. He said to give it a couple of days because it may take awhile for the downloads to actually happen. I have a followup scheduled for a few days from now.

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.

But yes, good point that everyone needs to get an engineering ticket and push for a resolution. People still have the right to be upset and discuss it here. I’ve mentioned in comments that everyone with this issue needs to contact Apple support. I am hoping for a future solution but not optimistic unfortunately.

It’s strange because from 13.0-13.1.3 I lost all my pictures in the info tab. Nothing was showing at all. When I updated to 13.2 OTA nothing changed.

however when I wiped the phone on 13.2 and restored from backup pictures dating back to 2013 were in the info pane however thousands were still missing in between 2013-present.

it seems the phone is only indexing certain content? Or...?

Yes I have the same issue.

i have 13.3 GB in the cloud. But it’s only downloading 4.5 GB. If I toggle the Messages in iCloud off it says they are not fully downloaded. if I proceed they never do download however When I turn off Messages in the cloud and check my IPhone storage, Messages instantly jumps to 10Gb....

also what you are saying is normal and goes back to what I explained earlier. When you have ICloud Messages enabled, they are excluded from your iCloud backup.

so technically you actually don’t have a true “backup”. One wrong slip and delete a message you need, it alone with attachments will be deleted from the cloud and all your devices instantly.

There is no recovery procedure. It’s gone.

this is why you also need a off iTunes backup just in case.

I have restored 6 times since the release of 13.0 trying to resolve this. Nothing is helping. There are also multiple people reporting this on Reddit as well.

I’m not sure why this is only affecting some of us. Out of 6 phones in the house only mine lost access to the photos. However mine was a fresh install/restore while all others in the home were OTA updates.

I continue to tell everyone reading, call Apple. OPEN A TICKET. Reference this post. Insist you are not the only one.

The indexing would be a stellar feature if it didn’t break our photos tab.

We are all monthly subscriber customers, Apple needs to make this work. We cannot settle for less.

No you would set up your phone as usual but instead of backing up from the cloud hit don’t transfer apps and apparently it works.. I’ve reset mine maybe tome but but like this. If you try it let me know if it works!

as I mentioned I had to do a full restore too.

over the air update did not yield results.

I was successful using my iCloud back up.

just wondering ?

does your iPhone storage for messages match your iCloud storage? In GB?

My issues are extensive and I’m starting to think this goes beyond just an issue with iOS13. It is my belief that it is also a problem with iCloud.

Like everyone, my message data count is off from the iPhone storage amount (40gb VS 21gb... and for my second phone 40gb VS 180mb [yet, there are clearly more than 180mb worth of data on the device]). I also have this problem with my photos backup in iCloud with my iPhone storage amount actually exceeding the iCloud amount (123.76gb on one phone & 107.8gb in iCloud).

I have come to realize that it may have actually been the iCloud backup after the iOS13 update (also did the 13.2.2 update with no fix occurring) that corrupted my iMessage & Photos data. This is when 2018 messages became dated for 2017, messages on one device got completely wiped out then replaced by messages of another device, messages from two different phone #s (yes I have two phones) got combined into one single chat, photos did not properly index, specific text messages from certain chats disappeared, whole chats disappeared from the phone that seemed to be the “primary” (the one that replaced the messages from other phone - which are completely gone & unrecoverable from what I can tell), & more.

Also decided to look at old photos in my device to see if something happened there. It did. I’m missing random photos from my Photos app also. My favorite part (sarcasm) is when I was looking at photos I take for renter’s insurance and two hours later that photo had disappeared from my Photo library on my phone.

I have complained to Apple earlier this week, acquired a case #, spoken to a customer relations officer, & setup an appointment to talk with a team of “senior technical advisors”. The original Apple representative that connected me to the customer relations officer mentioned that she had received several of these calls this week. Hoping to have them provide some type of solution, but I won’t be doing any phone restore. I tried that on an older phone that I kept (iPhone 6+) only to end up losing all photos & messages from 4thQ 2016 - completely gone. Also had the email app make several emails disappear from both that app and the actual email database that I utilize (gmail & yahoo). Basically just having this iPhone update (virus) erase critical & sentimental data across the board.

It seems like it already may have been addressed. Waiting for a new update won’t yield results if the OS system files are corrupted somewhere.

iCloud messages were enabled when I backed up and restored.

seems like maybe the indexing service that was running after a restore was getting stuck and the only way to

retrigger it now is starting on a newly restored phone. Which they must have fixed...

it looks like a restore is needed when upgrading from a problematic version of 13 to the latest. Something must be corrupted in the system partition.

however the data used is still showing wrong.

if you are sitting around waiting for a fix I think you’re not going to get anywhere as the “fix” for indexing was already released.

if you have an already existing recent backup I would move it to a secure place for now. (You can find this location on google depending if your on pc or Mac.)

then run a new full backup...

however I don’t think you will lose the data either way as the indexing is just for display of the info tab.

always good to be better safe than sorry.

Google drive and flash drive bad idea. Especially for large amounts of data. Get an external hard drive if you’re that paranoid.

you can check if your data is in the cloud

settings - click your name - manage storage

it will break down exactly what you have in the cloud