iMessage "Tap to Download" Issue

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.

The same thing has happened to me with IOS 15. I’m so sad. I tried the whole iCloud turn messages off and then back on and restarting device etc and it didn’t help, in fact now it went from tap to download to the question mark. :( I am so sad and want to access photos that are special to me. I hope someone can figure out a solution or in the new update they fix it. I even lost the button that always said “tap to download” for images within the chat. Ugh!!!

I'll add to the strange behavior. After trying all of the suggested options, the pictures did not download to the iPhone. I went into Messages on my MacBook Air and clicked in "i" on one of my message threads. Under Photos, none are visible. If I click on "show more", the space where the pictures should be visible gets much taller and takes a lot of scrolling to get to the bottom. It's as if there are invisible placeholders for the many pictures , including the ones not downloading to the phone. I hope this means the pictures still exist.

Came here looking for help as this is effecting a lot of iPhone users. I guess Apple won’t address this? I’ve tried everything and I’m just like every single other user in here, frustrated and in a worse position than when I started. “Tap to Download” option has disappeared completely for me. When I look at photos through iMessage it says, “more photos will appear when iPhone is done indexing” but this has been there ever since the update. Come on Apple.

Just curious where apple is on this. The original post was December 2021 and I’m here in July 2022 having the same problem. An updated response from apple would be a really good show for these 1000+ loyal customers who are having this upsetting issues.

Completely agree, I have had an open case with Apple about this exact issue since mid Dec last year too. All I keep getting is it’s with the ‘engineering team’. It’s so evident this is a growing issue/bug that is impacting their customers greatly. To have no resolve or acknowledgment is super disappointing. The customer support is next to zero… :(

also having this exact same issue. tried contacting apple support and they pointed to a carrier issue. would really appreciate a response on this. I've run into many issues with not being able to get photos needed in text conversations and loading existing pictures.

I have had exactly the same problem!! Have enough storage space in iPhone and almost 2T in Icloud!! Please Apple post a solution to this instead of so many of us calling you!! We have all trouble shoot with your suggestions now we need a clear solution posted!! Thank you Apple!!

I tried everything this forum suggested and was not able to retrieve any pictures or videos. However, when I went to iMessages on my apple computer all the pictures and videos were there and I downloaded them to my computer and then saved them onto my phone. I hope this helps.

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)..

A photo in a text vanished after only 2 weeks. Same problem - Tap to Download doesn't work - all I get is a circle and "Downloading..." in blue, but nothing downloading. I see over 1,500 people have this issue and nothing works.

One suggested solution was go to iCloud then Messages - must tap iCloud to get to Messages because Messages is not in the list presented before tapping iCloud

Thank you for your feedback. After turning Messages off a popup stated messages have not been fully downloaded to this phone, and below that 'Disable and Download messages' which I did. After that I did see a message at the bottom of my list of messages which advised 'Downloading messages' for a very long time. The one picture i wanted between two texts is still not there. Nothing else that know of was lost, and although I have the filename of the picture I have no idea how to access it in the cloud.

I don't have another Apple device i could use.