iMessage "Tap to Download" Issue

Workaround: upload the pictures to a shared album and then save the images from that. Annoying but apple won’t fix it so.

following these steps fixed it for me: https://allthings.how/how-to-fix-tap-to-download-problem-in-imessage/

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

That Gg in your profile name must stand for Double-Genius. I appears to be working. Very slowly but I have a ton of images. Looks like you saved my memories. My Mother passed away last year and I was scrolling through the text messages we shared so I read our previous conversations and skim through the images, but no images were downloading. I have them now, along with a huge smile on my face and warmth in my heart. Thank you gganne! I'm happy because of you, but disappointed that Apple dropped out of the conversation sometime ago and without a solution. I've been using Apple since Apple was born, and it's disappointing to see that they bailed on this conversation.

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.

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. 😡

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!!

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.

Still can’t seem to resolve this issue. I paid for an iPhone with 256gb, have my settings to save messages forever and pay apple for extra storage. Then we can’t access pictures any more ? Just tap to download with no actual download ? Apple please fix this issue.

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!!!