iMessage "Tap to Download" Issue

Some results, still missing earlier photos, attachments, etc.. Thanks for passing along anecdotal solutions. Fact: While apple revenues increase, support declines…and the end users, once again figure out how to survive!

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

PacoHunter10,

Thanks for keeping us updated.

Based on the information you've provided, and the steps you've already gone through we would recommend reaching out to Apple Support directly from this link here: Get Support - Apple

From that link choose iPhone > Apps & Features > SMS, MMS or Messages not working as expected. From there you should see a few options to reach out, depending on your location.

Take care!

Doing what gganne said worked. Be patient though. It takes a while for them to reappear. Mine took 30+ minutes. Obviously issue with Apple…I just wish they would post a solid answer and resolve the issue in an upgrade. Seems like it’s been happening for sometime.

Same issue with two iPnones:

iPhone 8, iOS 15.2.1, 64 GB storage, 18 GB available, iCloud storage 50 GB/28 GB available.

iPhone 12 Pro, iOS 15.2.1. 256 GB storage, 233 GB available, iCloud storage 50 GB/31 GB available.

Clearly not a storage issue. I am reluctant to try what gganne suggested as a fix for fear of losing more than just the photos that are not appearing when "tap to download" does not work. Can others report on the details of the steps involved and their results? Thanks in advance.

midwestsky,

I have been trying to download pictures from a while back that were in old messages, when I turned off my icloud messages and told them to dowload it let me click the dowload but popped up another image that has a wuestion mark like the ones in your screenshots. are these the photos that you could recover, or were they just taking a while to come in? We’re you able to go back and check to see if they had came in, I was wondering so i would know if it was worth checking throughout the upcoming days to see if it has come back yet or if that’s not possible.

Thanks, brarcar!

unfortunately I was not able to recover all the past photos however the majority did re-download…several individuals suggested that I may have deleted photos from past text threads, that was not the case…fact is that, not everything form my past threads were able to be restored…consequences we may have to deal with…it’s no wonder why continuous updates are being shoved into the ios, a system that requires constant updates is fragile, AAPL seems to be conditioning our minds and behavior to think this is okay, we should accept and live with it…however, I’m from a time before cellular and have readjusted to catching up to the world infrequently…amazing how peaceful it is in between…with this said, ggane’s discovered process will be your best recovery method, follow the yellow brick road.. carpe diem

Heya! Sorry for replying to your message I just didn’t know how to post a message without doing a reply. But I’m still having the same issue, especially with older pictures I just can’t seem to get them back. I’ve tried everything on this thread, does anybody have any other ideas on what to do? No matter how many times I click to download it’ll pretend to download for like a second and just go back. Super duper upset about this as I didn’t save those old pictures and would love to get them back. Thanks

Same issue here with my iPad Pro… My 2015 iMac and brand new iPhone 13 Pro Max are working just fine. However, my iPad attachments and photos in the text breads are not downloading at all. I tried a few of the trouble shooting tips, but nothing works. I did notice that my iCloud storage is almost full at 50GB, but wouldn’t that effect my iMessages on the iPhone and iMac as well, since it’s all linked…??

Lucky you! When I finally got to doing that it told me that my Apple ID and password don’t match those on iMessages. So I logged in and out of everything:Apple ID and iMessages then logged in again, exactly as instructed by Apple help and still the issue isn’t resolved. 😡

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.

This still doesn't work :( devastated because my girlfriend sent me engagement ring ideas a few months ago and I don't want to tip her off that I am shopping for them but I will have to ask for them again. Anyone else find any solutions?

Same issue on my mothers phone! Plenty of storage locally and in the icloud. She’s 82 and absolutely loves to get pictures from her grandchildren and children. We are a family of iPhone users, and have done troubleshooting, nothing fixes it. However it will all the sudden stop doing it and start delivering pictures, its happened in the past as well. Currently she’s getting the tap to down load, of course, nothing happens when she taps. All of her updates are done when pushed to users. She doesn’t use the phone for internet surfing or mail…just texting and phone. Apple, please help!!

I have done ALL the things suggested, spent 12+ hours on the phone with Apple, my carrier, and at the Genius Bar (not so genius). One apple supervisor told me it was my wireless carriers issue - I went to them, and they replaced my phone because it was under warranty, and still no change. With the last supervisor I spoke to, I jumped through more hoops that didn’t work, but would not take “I’m sorry we can’t fix it” as an answer. I asked that he bring this issue to the engineers if all the attempts didn’t work. He did, and I’m waiting for a reply from them.

It it really is disheartening that so many have reached out with this problem, only to

get brushed off without a solution, other than their checklists.

Apple ***. This is just another issue with another Apple product that costs way too much and doesn’t work as advertised. At least the investors are happy with the company!

I just spent an hour at the “Genius” bar trying to solve this issue - they’re not so smart & definitely aren’t helpful - after an hour of the tech doing all sorts of things that didn’t work (including a hard phone reset), he dismissed me because he had other customers waiting(!) Gee, thanks Dan. I still can’t retrieve important pics sent to me last year.