Group Messaging toggle is missing in IOS 17

markitha180 wrote:

When will this be updated There is no way this can be a carrier issue when it is happening to multiple people on different carriers. They need to own up to this or and fixed this.

It's happened to everyone. The Group Message toggle has been removed. Apple has not commented on why.

You can let them know your thoughts here:

Product Feedback - Apple

I had to do a reset on my settings first. I lost all my settings, but after that, it allowed me to send individual messages to a group of people with MMS toggled off. Before the settings reset, with MMS off, if I messaged more than one person, the message would fail to send.

Go to Settings, Messages and turn off MMS Messaging. That seems to work for me.

The Work around is to turn off iMessage and to turn off MMS.

Hello123g~ I have an iPhone SE, my husband an iphone X. The update caused the removal of group messaging toggle in my phone, but not in his. He has done all the updates and continues to have the group message toggle. I now do not think that it was an intentional removal, I think it is a glitch that randomly affects. Perhaps with the next update, things will smooth out. It is not a feature that they would knowingly remove. It makes no sense that they would.

A way around it is installing ( shortcut app) from apple . You can compose the text , then select all contacts you want , it will be sent individually not as a group

Sc_psalm55 wrote:

After further investigation this is not a solution. I removed myself from the group when i turned off MMS and everyone else is seeing the all the replies except me, the originator of the group text.

Why isn't anyone from apple responding to the issue?

Have you contacted Apple about it? Apple doesn't read here in this user-to-user forum for feedback. You can contact them directly using the Support link at the bottom left of every page of these forums.

I had the same issue, not sure what update it was, but definitely 17+ on my XR. I resolved it by disabling SMS but leaving MMS Messaging on. It took me all day to figure something out after updating both my computer and phone, logging off, signing out, restarting etc. There is/was definitely something wrong.

Make sure you submit your feedback at Apple.com/feedback. The more people who do, the more likely they might listen!

From this article:

Send a group text message on your iPhone or iPad - Apple Support

”If you don’t see an option to turn on MMS Messaging or Group Messaging, contact your carrier to see if your plan supports Group MMS Messaging.”

bomberboy wrote:

Has anyone else lost all MMS settings where you don’t have an option to turn MMS messaging off anymore?

It looks like Apple is not going to bring this feature back.

If you don't see the MMS toggle, you need to contact your carrier. If you have that feature on your account, the toggle should be there.

The only toggle that was removed was the Group Message toggle.

I had to reset my phone through settings to get this to work. I had same issue as you when I had MMS messaging off, I couldn’t send or receive messages to/from more than one person (bcc essentially). Once I reset my phone I was able to send mass text to multiple people and receive group messages with MMS off. Hope this helps.

The only “work around” I have found is to turn off iMessage and MMS when sending out mass texts. Also you have to limit the message so I have what used to be one text to three texts per group.