Pictures are black in PDF of iMessage

Never had to use this feature until my best friend passed away. I'm trying to save our entire chat history over the years. Wish I didn't upgrade to Big Sir.

What's frustrating is that you can see a few pixels of the image, however, the rest is covered in black. So obviously, there's some sort of bug here. Even happens on much smaller conversation threads. Emojis and link image previews appear just fine.

Help us Apple!

I am having the same problem, but it appears as though there is a black box over the photo. I uploaded the PDF to Adobe, selected Edit PDF and this allows me to remove the various sections of the black box and reveal the photo. Not a long term fix, but I hope this helps.

Hi Samsterdam2,

Thanks for coming to Apple Support Communities for help today. It sounds like you are making PDFs of iMessage conversations but images are blacked out on your Mac.

Are you going through File > Print > PDF > Save As PDF? Are any Security Options enabled?

Does this happen with every Message you attempt to save as a PDF?

What happens if you sign into Messages inside a new user account? Does the same thing occur? Here's how to make a new user: Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac.

Let us know further details.

Have a fantastic day!

I just contacted Apple Support regarding this issue. I told the representative that it appears (from someone else's post on this thread), that Apple changed their privacy policy in iMessage that has resulted in this problem. I explained that there are many people who want (or need) the ability to print or save PDF copies of conversations with photos not blacked out. The representative had me make a "concise statement of complaint" that he typed up to submit.

BUT -- he informed me that the chances of this being changed, because the change was due to privacy concerns and issues, is very, very low. I explained how printing a conversation with these big black boxes was a real problem (lots of ink, paper), and how I felt that a person - if they've sent me a photo - has given me permission to print it. He suggested a "screen shot" of photos, but obviously that does not resolve the problem.

I suggest we all continue to contact support or provide feedback to Apple regarding this, and see if it can't be changed.

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

To summarize what is really happening.

Apple, to protect ones privacy, decided to black out the images when you print or export to PDF. If you export to PDF and open the PDF with a more sophisticated editor such as Adobe Photoshop / Illustrator, Affinity Photo / Designer you will see there are layers for the images. All Apple did was put a black box layer over the top of each of the images. You can remove this black box using the more sophisticated software. Any software that can edit PDF's and display the layers should work. Fortunately, Apple decided against merging the layers or using actual redaction methods to scrub the image beneath.

All I have to do is uncheck that middle Group black box and the image below appears then save the PDF.

Obviously, that can be tedious but with professional tools you may be able to automate it a bit. Other tooling that might work would be to extract the Messages from an iPhone and there's at least 2-3 of those tools for macOS where you connect the iPhone to the Mac and use that software to extract the Messages including the attachments and you won't have the blackout occurring. This appears to be the easiest of all the methods.

Another option is to open the Messages App on the iPhone tap on the Info for the Contact at the top and select the photos you wish to save and put them into Photos. That will save your photos outside of Messages in the Photos camera roll. They will not be blacked out. I wish Apple made it easier to select many at once instead of tapping every single image one at a time. I think you can tap and drag in Photos but not in the Messages photo selection screen. At least I can't find a way to quickly select many of the Messages photos.

I have the same problem. I am required to save my work conversations every two weeks. Something happened between 4/15/2021 and 4/29/2021. My PDF export on 4/15/2021 has all the images from the Messages conversation. My next PDF export on 4/29/2021, however, has black boxes where the images should be.

I'm pretty sure I didn't change anything to cause the problem. Was there a MacOS update between 4/15 and 4/29?

There was a macOS Big Sur 11.3 update on 4/26, but the release notes don't mention anything about messages. I know that I don't remember changing anything on my Mac.

Maybe somebody can test this in Messages on their Mac if they have a conversation that include images (photos, documents, etc). Select the conversation and then File > Print > Save as PDF, and see if all the images show up in the exported conversation.

Confirmed, I have duplicated the problem on a brand new M1 Mac mini with Big Sur 11.4 and latest patches. Super clean macOS installation. This appears to be a bug.

Everyone should submit feedback on this bug to get Apple's attention so they can fix it. There is something wrong with the rendering of images within iMessage printing (PDF or otherwise).

https://feedbackassistant.apple.com

There are alternative Apps from 3rd Parties to access your iPhone data including Messages. PhoneView, CopyTrans, and iExplorer are perhaps the top 3. These tools allow you to access your raw data and back it up or otherwise extract it more effectively than Apple normally allows.

I have the same thing, except I am trying to save my son's conversations. He too passed away. The only work around I have found is to drag the photos off, number them according to where they were in the conversation and store the text and pics in a folder. It's very time consuming, but you might want to do this to save the conversation (in case it somehow disappears) until Apple has fixed this issue.

They can send a person to the moon, but they can't get this right. :(

Encountering the same issue. I've contacted apple support regarding this and it seems like they've updated the privacy terms on iMessage which makes attachments like photos now unavailable on export (i.e. saving as PDF). I've been told that there's currently no way to override this. However, apparently if enough feedback was sent to apple to reverse this, they might consider making the changes.

I started having this same problem. I have several important conversations with photos that I want to save, including one with my my now deceased cousin, who sent me a lot of photos in her texts. I hope that Apple gets this fixed! I will send a comment to Apple Support and I hope that everyone who has this problem will do the same.

I stopped using Abobe Acrobat Reader and started using Apples Preview to view PDFs. I just tried using Adobe's reader that I had on my computer, but apparently now it's not a stand alone program (or I'm confused about it). When I tried to edit it required me to sign up for a trial or purchase and to sign in to Adobe. Not too excited to do that... Great option for those of you who use Adobe, though. I'm going to try and see if there is another program that will do the same. Preview has a few editing capabilities - but I've not been able to figure out a way to get the black boxes removed.

I just tried Affinity Designer and you can see the layers of black covering the images in the PDF and hide/remove them in the layers editor. You just need software that can edit PDF layers. Adobe Acrobat / Photoshop / Illustrator can do it as well as Affinity Photo / Designer.

The Affinity software retails for $49 USD but is frequently on sale for 50% off. No subscription. There's likely at least one free tool somewhere.

But as my earlier comment indicated there are better ways to extract Messages from an iPhone / iPad using tools specifically designed for that purpose that should not cover the images with black. It's a shame Apple doesn't provide that functionality but using such a 3rd party tool would save you time.