Unable to send photos with my new iPhone to non-iPhone users through Messages

Exact same problem here. Turned off my VPN and pix send fine.

Laura3B wrote:

Apple created this problem to begin with.

Incorrect. Call your carrier. Only they can fix it.

JPK_01 wrote:

This issue has been raising complaints for years & from users of multiple carriers. It's about time Apple included absolutely clear information on this issue in their documentation.

Please cite some examples from prior years that did not turn out to be misconfiguration of the account by the carrier. There were a bunch among Verizon customers when the iPhone 14 came out, and ALL of them were because Verizon had misconfigured the accounts on iPhone 14’s.

With 2 billion iPhones in use around the world there is no such thing as an isolated complaint; no matter what problem you have there will be others with the same symptoms, keeping in mind that a symptom can reflect many different problems.

Well I tried everything in this thread from working with my carrier to turning things on and off and standing on my head spitting nickels. Almost everything I have tried would work one or two times then go right back to not sending pictures. Also even when it worked my iPhone would show the red exclamation mark and say not delivered. The only thing I have found that works 98% of the time reducing the picture size to 500KB. If I get the not delivered message I just it send again and it goes. So who knows where the problem is.

It is not a carrier issue, it is iPhone, those that say its a carrier issue are just stubborn. Anyway my housemate had the same problem. You have to reboot the iPhone TWICE , if MMS if off turn it on, if it is on turn it off. If it was On already you turn MMS off, reboot, turn MMS on reboot.

Anyone who think's that's a carrier issue just doesn't plain get it. LOL

Ashtonggaming wrote:

You can’t send photos ,videos or audio files through sms as non iPhone users aren’t on iMessage they use sms

Photos, video and audio files to non-iPhone users are sent using MMS. And yes, it's completely possible to do so. But, the carrier has to have it set up properly.

I found a fix at least for Verizon. If you download the Verizon messages+ app and set it up, you can then send an image via that app. Once that image is sent, it seems to re-enable the ability to send photo messages in your account. It's worth a try!

Jilliansnet wrote:

In all our apple phones

That almost certainly means that your accounts are not set up correctly with your carrier, so, as I said, contact your carrier’s tech support after checking the settings I listed.

Nope. I have been dealing with this for months. I have reset the messages and everything else many, many times. Literally the only different thing I did was turn off iMessages. When the pic sent I thought for sure turning it back on would cause the photos to stop sending again. There is likely some sort of cache limit written into iMessages that reset when I toggled it off.

Well, everyone in this and other threads who contacted their carrier got the problem fixed quickly; some even did it on their own on their carrier’s app (you can read the thread to find out how). So you can continue to blame Apple and not get the problem fixed, or badger your carrier until they fix it. Your choice; I don’t care what you do.

Interesting, I dealt with T-Mobile customer support, and consequently found a large thread about the same issue. The problem is squarely with Apple, in fact the problem is especially problematic with iPhone 14's. T-Mobile suggests waiting until Apple fixes the problem or using a different messenger service. "Which I do anyway". iPhone 14 can't will sometimes send photos (10% of the time) on low res settings. But will only send regular photos 5% of the time to Android phones.

The facts are clear, so sorry I am correct. If multiple carriers can't fix it, it is Apple's problem.

Luckily my apple watch works fine with the signal app.

So, your carrier's customer service was trying to get you off the phone as fast as possible. They have quotas and that's what they do. Call them back and tell them to turn off MMS and group messaging. Don't get too deep into why. Thank them and hang up. Restart your phone. Call them back and ask them to turn MMS and group messaging on again.

Respectfully, @IdrisSeabright, that’s not the whole story. That’s the most often cited solutions and while it has worked for some folks, it’s not universal. After a cumulative 9 hours on with different Verizon techs and about an hour with Senior Apple techs, it’s clear that there’s an unusual bug in the mix somewhere and the engineers are aware of it but haven’t found a solution. In the penultimate 16.X iOS release, Apple changed the way it handled MMS preferences/settings and some of the issues seems to stem from that. The cold hard pill is that there is no quick fix for this issue as of right now.

I tried all the troubleshooting in apple support and on this thread last night. This morning i went to setting>general>about and changed the name of my iPhone and then force restarted and the photos are now sending if anyone else wants to try that step.

2 billion users who don’t have the issue. It is absolutely a carrier issue, as carriers are 100% responsible for handling SMS/MMS messages between devices. Apple has no control over SMS/MMS messaging.

what did your carrier say when you contacted them? If you bothered to read the thread you posted to most said that their carrier fixed it.