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macbook sending empty picture messages through imessage

Hi! I can text through imessage from my macbook air with no issue. When I try to send a picture message, it shows up on my computer, but the recipient only gets an empty message. Does anyone have any solutions to this?

Thanks!

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.4

Posted on Jan 25, 2022 5:53 PM

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Posted on Feb 2, 2022 7:58 PM

Hi Ilikedogs2, in case your issue is still occuring, I wanted to pass this information along. I came across a discussion regarding the same issue you describe. They solved their issue by performing the following troubleshooting steps. Important Note, before making any changes and/or performing these troubleshooting steps, please be certain to perform a backup of your Mac (always backup your devices regularly :-)).


  1. Sign out from iMessage
  2. Finder, Go > Library (Hold option)
  3. Locate Messages folder
  4. delete everything ends with .db
  5. restart the computer
  6. open iMessage and sign in again


It may take a bit of time for your iMessage to repopulate the dbs. I'd allow 15 minutes before trying a text message(with picture attached) to yourself. Go to your iPhone to confirm the message came through and you can see the image.

5 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Feb 2, 2022 7:58 PM in response to ilikedogs2

Hi Ilikedogs2, in case your issue is still occuring, I wanted to pass this information along. I came across a discussion regarding the same issue you describe. They solved their issue by performing the following troubleshooting steps. Important Note, before making any changes and/or performing these troubleshooting steps, please be certain to perform a backup of your Mac (always backup your devices regularly :-)).


  1. Sign out from iMessage
  2. Finder, Go > Library (Hold option)
  3. Locate Messages folder
  4. delete everything ends with .db
  5. restart the computer
  6. open iMessage and sign in again


It may take a bit of time for your iMessage to repopulate the dbs. I'd allow 15 minutes before trying a text message(with picture attached) to yourself. Go to your iPhone to confirm the message came through and you can see the image.

Jan 26, 2022 12:33 AM in response to ilikedogs2

A couple of questions:

-You said the recipient gets an empty message. If you have added a written text message under the image, does recipient get/see the written part of the message?

-Is this happening with one recipient or with all recipients?

-if you take a test pic with the cam built into the MBA(don’t process the image at all) and send it to the recipient using Share>messages, do they successfully see that image?

-if you use your iPhone’s iMessage to text the same image to the recipient, does the recipient now successfully see the image? [after sending the text image from the MBA, that will now be in your iPhone’s iMessage conversation with the recipient].

-What happens if the recipient texts an image to you, do you see the image in iMessage on the MBA?


what I’d look to do (and why I asked the questions above) is isolate this down to who/where the issue lives. This could be your MBA, or the recipient’s device (for some reason maybe it can’t read the pic format you’re sending), possibly filtering by your ISP or telco. I use iMessage on my MBA often to send/receive images.





Jan 26, 2022 11:57 PM in response to ilikedogs2

That’s some thorough testing. So the image from your iMessage MBA shows up blank even on your own iPhone iMessage? Looks like the issue is isolated down to the MBA being the root cause. Is the MBA signed into same iCloud account as your iPhone?

I’d suggest trying to determine if it’s iMessage itself that is the issue or a wider problem on your MBA. To help try to confirm that, here’s a suggestion: on your MBA find a pic from iMessage (that you previously sent to someone but it showed up blank), double click it and share using airdrop. Go ahead receive that airdrop on your iPhone. Now open the pic on your iPhone, do you see the actual pic?


Also, What’s your MBA model year and what OS is it running?

macbook sending empty picture messages through imessage

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