Some contact pictures missing in iMessage on my iPhone but appear on MacBook

One other observation, on the iPhone in iMessage, when the picture has disappeared, if I click on the contact in iMessage and then, 'info' in the picture isn't there, I click on 'info' again and I get the options of 'Share Contact', 'Create New contact', and 'Add to Existing Contact' and therefore it has lost the link to the contact.

If I change some contact info again to force the picture to appear in iMessage on the iPhone. Then in iMessage, go to the 'info' of the contact it links correctly, showing the relevant contact and picture. When I relaunch iMessage on the iPhone the link to the contact has disappeared.

Is this a bug?

Thanks in advance.

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. I have iPhone 11 Pro on iOS 14.0.1 and a MacBook is 10.15.7 (19H2). Just to be clear it only contacts that have 'Company' ticked.

I recently erased and restore from backup on both the iPhone (and Apple Watch) to solve a battery issue and transfer of data. After the erase and restore from back up some of the 'Company' contact pictures appeared on the iPhone as they do on my MacBook. I have read a trick to force an iCloud update to the contact pictures by changing something in the contact and saving it. When I did that more started to appear on the iPhone. Great!

However, when I closed iMessage on the phone and reopened it, all the 'Company' contact pictures had disappeared! I have tried the following solutions:

• Forced an iCloud update by changing some contact information such as phone number - worked temporally until app is closed and re opened
• Erased contacts from the iPhone and resinatlled from iCloud - didn't make a difference
• Removed the 'Company' tick and used the business name as the first name - didn't make a difference
• Deleted a 'Company' contact and made a completly new one with a new contact picture - didn't make a difference
• Tried changing the picture from one in Photos - didn't make a difference
• Erased and restored from backup on the iPhone - worked temporally until app is closed and re opened
• I have had this problem in iOS 13 and iOS 14 (they worked fine before that). When macOS Catalina was released I rebuilt my Mac from scratch - didn't make a difference

I am really stuck! One thing I have noticed on the Macbook, for the problem 'Company' contacts, the messages disappear in iMessage when I force an iCloud update by changing the contact info. I have to restart iMessage on the Mac to make the message reappear.

Any ideas??

Many thanks

Hi

Thanks for the reply. I can confirm the pictures appear in iCloud. The source of the picture says 'iCloud' just under the circular picture in the Contact app on the Mac.

I also tried changing the picture to a default one to see if the picture itself was the problem. If I change the picture to a default one on either the Mac or iPhone, I see it change in Contacts on all platforms including iCloud. On the Mac the picture changes in iMessage and Mail. It also appears in iMessage on the iPhone however if I close the app and reopen it the picture disappears.

What I don't understand is a very few 'Company' contacts the picture does work across all platforms and doesn't disappear on the iPhone. Hence, as you see above, I looked to create a new version of a 'Company' contact to see if that was issue but that didn't solve it.

Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.