icloud and imessage contact photo issues

Question

Level 3

814 points

icloud and imessage contact photo issues

i have 2 icloud accounts associated with my children, for both accounts i am the organizer.

i've tried to setup a picture associated with their icloud accounts as well as a picture associated with their imessage and its not really working.

on icloud.com, i log into each of their accounts and setup their account picture, that seems to work.

when i create user accounts for each of them on a mac, log into them for each user and use their specific icloud account credentials .... i cannot get imessage to save their contact photo.

i get to the point where their contact name and picture is set, but clicking 'Done' doesn't finish or do anything for that matter.

having trouble figuring out what's going on with that. and i don't understand why imessage won't adopt the picture i uploaded as their icloud contact photo.

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 12.4

Posted on May 22, 2022 4:17 PM

Reply

Answer 1

AnnieL2

Community Specialist

May 23, 2022 11:47 AM in response to zero7404

Good day zero7404,

To clarify, are these the steps you’re taking to share a photo and name via the Messages app? Share your name and photo in Messages on Mac

Are these Apple IDs used on any other devices?

Thanks.

Reply

Answer 2

SnickZ.

Community Specialist

May 24, 2022 10:53 AM in response to zero7404

Thanks for trying those steps and getting back to us, zero7404. It's appreciated.

You were wondering if this could be an iOS or macOS issue, but it could be both.

Are you using multiple accounts for their Contacts? Are all of their Contacts listed in iCloud?

Use other contact accounts on iPhone - Apple Support

Change Accounts preferences in Contacts on Mac - Apple Support

If you're using multiple Contact accounts, be sure to set iCloud as the default:

For Mac: Change General preferences in Contacts on Mac - Apple Support

For iPhone: Open the Contacts app, select "Groups" on the top-left corner and deselect all other accounts but iCloud. Manage and delete contacts on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support

Feel free to get back to us with any questions or problems you may have.

All the best.

Reply

Answer 3

zero7404 Author

Level 3

814 points

May 24, 2022 10:28 AM in response to AnnieL2

i’ve looked at all i can think of in terms of obvious, both in icloud.com, on ios as well as on mac os.

something is wrong with the sync/integration.

yesterday, i took the time to fix all my contacts from icloud.com (browser login).

it seemed to stick and my ios and mac devices synced and everything was fine.

but today again looking at my contacts across all the interfaces, the pictures i assigned are gone, and extraneous text is present in some fields like phone numbers and addresses (text) i manually removed more than once from each contact. the text looks similar to this:

x-abshowas:COMPANY

and,

also, in a contact i assign the type of number and when i know its an iphone i choose ‘iphone’ as the type. this field also changes to something generic like ‘phone’

so this is a problem with icloud or ios or mac os.

tried to inform apple but after their callback got disconnected and they didnt try calling back, i havent tried to inform them again.

Reply

Answer 4

zero7404 Author

Level 3

814 points

May 24, 2022 3:54 PM in response to SnickZ.

if i were using multiple accounts across devices that would be clear because they would not sync the same across the board.

only using one account across devices, icloud account (i only have one).

this issue i noticed is recent, hasn’t been like this for a long time.

i use my google account to sync email and calendar, so apple mail and apple calendar access my google account, but not anything else. and i removed all my contacts in google so there would be nothing to sync anyway with apple products in terms of contacts.

i could remove all my contacts, then restore a backup .. ?

the calendar app behaves fine with my google account on both mac and ios. just contacts seem to be an issue

Reply

Answer 5

Rob_H1

Community Specialist

May 24, 2022 3:58 PM in response to zero7404

Thank you for that information zero7404!

Based on the actions you have already taken, we recommend contacting Apple directly to investigate. You can reach Apple directly by using this link:

Get Support

Cheers!

Reply

Answer 6

jeffd55

Community Specialist

May 24, 2022 4:23 PM in response to zero7404

zero7404,

We are recommending you contact Apple Support directly, so they can provide you with direct, immediate and specific responses. If we knew who you would be speaking with, we could point the to this discussion, but we don't. So, when you speak with them, you can certainly direct them to this thread and they can access it.

But, understand that even with the information here, they may ask you to perform some of the same tests so that they can be certain of what has been done.

Regards.

Reply