I make a PDF of my iMessages regularly. In the past I had no problem with that.
Since my update to Big Sur all the sent photos are totally black in the PDF. On the contrary links and emoticons are visible.
How can I resolve this problem?
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.3
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 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.
3 hours and 1,000 pages later, I was able to remove the black boxes in Adobe. (just to give y'all a time estimate of how long it takes)
Hopefully, they release a new OS update so folks with passed friends/family can easily save those precious memories.
Thank you so much appalenia!
I work in Product Design for legal services software and brought up this issue to my team. Their guess was that the legality of exporting pictures, etc. The photos are on your phone/computer locked with a password. Once they're exported to pdf or printed, anyone can see them.
Better to block all future exporting to prevent any legal battles.
I am testing PhoneView. Instead of the black box I see in iMessage, I see a gray box with the spinning circle in PhoneView. I don't know if this is because I didn't purchase the app, yet, or if PhoneView can't address Apple's cruelty. (I'm trying to save a thread from one of my best friend's who died of COVID.) I've contacted PhoneView's support, but wanted to know if you had any experience with the app.
I am having the same issue and was wondering if you solved the problem, thank you
No, actually not. Still no solution.
thank you
I was happily surprised to get a reply. Maybe a solution, but no.
A reinstallation of Big Sur doesn't help.
Still no solution.
I am wondering, are there users who can do this without any problem?
Or is it a general problem?
Yes, April 26th there was an update, a security update.
Is this still possible anyway?
Can some Big Sur users check this?
I just want to know if it is still possible before I spend much more time on this problem.
I don't think there's any solution right now until Apple fixes the issue.
Is Apple going to fix this so we can archive our iMessages? This is a big deal for record keeping and right now we're all stuck and unable to save without big black boxes/no images.
What's the difference between printing it and screenshotting the message to print?
Apple definitely didn't think this one through.
:(
Pictures are black in PDF of iMessage
