iMessage "Tap to Download" Issue

Just read a suggestion from gganne that worked for me. Go into your ICloud and toggle messages off. A pop up will appear which tells you all of your messages have not been downloaded. Select disable and download. Then toggle messages on. Go to your messages app and at the bottom you should see “downloading messages from iCloud”. I suggest being on Wifi while doing so. It took about 10 minutes for my messages to download. I was able to retrieve my picture messages again. Hope it helps you also

F**king SOLVED!!!! I’ve been having this issue on and off for years. After my upgrade to a new iPhone everything’s always fine. For a little while. And then inevitably one day I’m feeling nostalgic and search my text convos for that some random old image, and it’s showing me one of the following: attachment icon showing file icon and file name (IMG.***), attachment icon which reads “Tap to download,” or an attachment icon with a question Mark on it. It’s worth noting than none of these will lead to the image. Sometimes “Tap to download” does nothing, and sometimes it downloads and then levels up to a question mark. Every piece of advice I’ve ever recieved on this issue has had the same thing in common: WiFi. Connect to wifi. You MUST make sure you are plugged in and CONNECTED TO WIFI.

WELL. today it started working. When I was nowhere near wifi, but had cellular.

When I got home I plugged in my phone excited to continue, but it wasn’t working again. Cause I’m home now and it connected to my wifi.

i disconnect from the wifi, force quit (swipe up) messages, make sure I got cellular bars, and sure enough when I click “tap to download”, they actually do.

Hope this helps.

note: before any of this, first I toggled off and on Messages in iCloud under settings. A message will pop up, press continue, then try what I said above.

what worked for me is I went to iCloud and turned off messages and turned it back on and when I checked my messages my photos had been downloaded

I went to settings---apple ID ---i cloud----

it asked me to sign the new user agreement

Then everything downloaded ....

As an Apple user after running into the same issues I’ve finally found a solution. First off appreciate gganne , hazeleyesArie , and a few other people that gave light on the situation. If turning off messages, disable and download. Turning the phone off and on etc didn’t work for you. 1st What you have to do is go into settings scroll down until you see messages click it. 2nd Click “send and receive” make sure you have your number as well as iCloud email selected under the receive option (most important step). 3rd Turn your phone off and on so it can register and you should be set. (Test it out by going into your messages and clicking on a photo that had the error issue)..

Guys make sure there’s enough space on your phone after resetting messages in iCloud settings. Lack of space will result in incomplete uploads (to iCloud) and incomplete downloads to the device. All media files are now viewable after doubling my capacity from my older phone.

Hello,

Hopefully this is helpful to anyone who is having this problem or still having this issue. What you want to do is go to your settings and go to iCloud, in which your next steps would be going to messages and turning it off and it might say something along the lines of there are still messages that need to be downloaded. What you want to do is still allow it to be disabled and the messages to still be downloading. Next you are going to want to do a restart of your device. Once you phone turns back on go back to settings and turn it back on for messages, your photos should now be downloaded back without any issue.

As an Apple user after running into the same issues I’ve finally found a solution. First off appreciate gganne , hazeleyesArie , and a few other people that gave light on the situation. If turning off messages, disable and download. Turning the phone off and on etc didn’t work for you. 1st What you have to do is go into settings scroll down until you see messages click it. 2nd Click “send and receive” make sure you have your number as well as iCloud email selected under the receive option (most important step). 3rd Turn your phone off and on so it can register and you should be set. (Test it out by going into your messages and clicking on a photo that had the error issue)..

As an Apple user after running into the same issues I’ve finally found a solution. First off appreciate gganne , hazeleyesArie , and a few other people that gave light on the situation. If turning off messages, disable and download. Turning the phone off and on etc didn’t work for you. 1st What you have to do is go into settings scroll down until you see messages click it. 2nd Click “send and receive” make sure you have your number as well as iCloud email selected under the receive option (most important step). 3rd Turn your phone off and on so it can register and you should be set. (Test it out by going into your messages and clicking on a photo that had the error issue)..

I contacted apple support and they told me to turn off iMessage all together. Turn off the phone, then turn it back on and turn messages back on. I checked my iMessage and was able to see the photos. It resolved my issue.

Hey there PacoHunter10,

Thanks for reaching out to the Apple Support Communities. We understand you're having issues with downloading photos sent in the Messages app, and we'd be happy to look into what's going on.

To get started, you've done some great troubleshooting to help isolate the issue. Going forward, how much storage space do you have available on your iPhone? If unsure, check out this link that can help with checking your available storage: How to check the storage on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support

If you have iCloud Photos enabled, we'd also recommend checking how much iCloud Storage is available to ensure that the issue is not related to insufficient storage: Manage your iCloud storage - Apple Support

If you find that you're low on storage, try freeing up some space using the recommended steps in the same resources above, and let us know if that's able to help.

Have a great day!

Same issue for weeks with my Iphone 13 Pro Max iOS 16.3. All of a sudden (no apps or new changes) my emails from Yahoo or Gmail or Outlook wouldn't download an attachment or even open it to view it. It would spin when clicked on but no progress would begin.

SOLUTION, for me at least, was to delete the Bitdefender VPN app which I've had for a long while. It instantly allowed me to download and view email attachments. At first I tried to simply flip the VPN switch off in Settings, but it would immediately turn itself back on, so that's what led to the deletion of the APP. I hope this helps someone with a similar issue.

Thank you SO much gganne - this totally worked! This problem was driving me nuts for a long time.

Settings -> iCloud -> Turn Messages on/off. Fixed!

This was solved after I updated the OS in the phone. Hope this helps.

I deal with this all the time and it’s so frustrating. Today I went into iMessage settings and turned off and on again the MMS settings. Now I’m back in messages and can tap to download?? This seems like a glitch with this iOS, I am currently running 16.4.1 on an iPhone 11 and this issue only started coning up when I did a factory reset on the phone recently.