Group Messaging toggle is missing in IOS 17

For some reason starting this past week, I have not been able to send any iMessages. Everything coming from my iPhone is a text message. I also cannot participate in any group messages or send links or certain pictures texts. I thought it was because I had an old phone so I got a new one. Getting a new phone did not fix the situation at all. All the problems from my old phone carried over to my new phone. Apple products are too expensive to not work the way they are supposed to work.

Thanks for the suggestion! But it looks like this app still uses the iPhone messaging service to send the message, so I will not be able to send the same message to a group of people individually (Bcc for text).

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?

This sucks!! I use this feature all of the time!! I don’t want to send a group text to 10 kids and 20 parents about basketball practice and have everyone’s phone ding every time someone replies. Also need to send a text to about 30 people about a party and to over 200 people for a save the date……and that’s JUST today!!!!!!

Same here. I've talked to Consumer Cellular three times about this issue. At the end of each session, they tell me this is not a Consumer Cellular issue. My iMessage settings looked just like the one above before I upgraded to iOS 17.x.x

I am not able to communicate with anyone who uses Androids ever since i migrated to ios 17.3. 2 days ago. My manager told me I cannot work until I can communicate by text with everyone in my group. As of today I am suspended without pay. Is there a fix for this ??

Gicomeng wrote:

I am not able to communicate with anyone who uses Androids ever since i migrated to ios 17.3. 2 days ago. My manager told me I cannot work until I can communicate by text with everyone in my group. As of today I am suspended without pay. Is there a fix for this ??

You need to contact your carrier.

Sc_psalm55 wrote:

Turning off SMS and leaving MMS on does not fix the issue.

It is not possible to turn off SMS from an iPhone. Only your carrier can do that.

Settings>Messages>Send as SMS doesn't turn off SMS. It changes what the phone does if an iMessage fails.

I tried the above and it didn’t work. The toggle button is still missing. I can send out a group text, but it goes to everyone individually and I receive the responses individually, which basically does me no good at all. I usually use group for making plans with a group and it does the group no good when they can’t see what others posted such as: who’s bringing what and ideas.

Interesting. I wonder if I should do a factory reset and try it again. I keep getting this when I turn off MMS. As you can see, I have tried it multiple times since the 17 update trying to get it to work.

Hopefully something like that gets my functionality back.

My iPhone 12 has been updated to iOS 17.4 as of this morning. The group messaging is getting even worse. There is a group I text every morning and have been doing so since I had iPhone SE 1st gen. The work around I was using to send to individuals is appearing as a group and any responses are viewed by the group. These kind of changes pushes me back to Samsung Galaxy. Which I currently have the 23. This is another story in itself. But I am accustomed to the iPhone and would like to continue with iPhone. But if Apple cannot get it together, as this affects businesses that use iPhone, businesses may look to Samsung as their options to go to. Most businesses I have come across use iPhone as their supplied phones to their personnel. Group messages go out to staff but are not necessary for 'All' to see responses.

Is this something Apple is going to look into? Or do we just need to make the switch to another competitor, Samsung, that will satisfy the needs of businesses to send group texts to individuals and receive individual responses?

No that will not work because your still going to get messages from all the others in the group that do not reply back to the original sender in a separate msg. Maybe by blocking the the group will stop it but what about next time will you not get the important msg your needing by blocking the group?

Apple needs to put that setting back!. The on/off toggle button for group msg in the setting menu.

This worked for me, after months of not being able to use a group chat with non iphone users. I would receive texts individually and they would send out individually. So happy something finally worked. I submitted feedback to apple as well.