After iOS 18 update photos in iMessage have disappeared

Here’s the fix:

Go to Settings>Apps>Messages

Click on Siri and turn all those settings off and then back on again.

Then go back to the previous menu and click on Search. Turn all those settings off and back on again also.

Now when you go back to your photos in your messages, you will see a message saying the phone is indexing all your messages. Give it some time. It might take a few hours or even a whole day, but all your photos in your messages should come back eventually.

This worked perfectly for me. Thank you! I have an IPhone 13.

Ok, I contacted Apple today on this issue. To rectify, I had to reset the phone.

For anyone else having this issue, this is what you have to do: Go to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset Phone > Reset > Reset all settings.

Note: you won't lose your apps, but stuff like your alarms, focus time etc, will be erased. If you haven't done a backup in a while, you may want to do that before you reset.

I had basically the same issue. After updating to IOS 18, any photos that were sent to me in a text were gone-just a gray bubble or outline. I tried some of these suggestions-didn't work. Called Apple support and she had me go to settings>click on my name>icloud>messages>Sync now

After about an hour many of the photos had reappeared, and she said it might take several hours for them all to come back

I have a slightly different problem. If I hit the plus sign next to a text message and try to select a photo from my gallery to send, the selection at the top, left of my photo app to get to my gallery is no longer available.

so I can basically take a new photo of something and send it, but I can't send existing photos in my photo gallery.

ive checked and turned off/on all suggested message settings, restarted my phone, checked for iCloud issues, etc.

i dont (and never have used iCloud to store my photos, so it's not a space issue with ICloud.

any other thoughts? Looks to be like a plain old bug with this new 18.x iOS version. I upgraded yesterday and am now having the problem.

Make sure messages are turned on in iCloud

Settings > iCloud > Messages > Sync

all your iMessages shared photos and links should come back

Doesn’t work for me

Came here for this! Same thing is happening to me and I have done everything like everybody else mention.

I can go to the Photo app and send it by Message and it will work. Same if I take a photo directly from the Message app but since the new IOS18 I can't send a previously taken photo directly from the Message App when I click on the + sign.

I hope there is a way around or they'll fix it because it's pretty annoying.

update: it worked but did not work for old old photos from early 2024 to mid 2024 only recent like starting after the update released so like around september

Then you’ll need to call Apple Support directly

Scorpi0's fix worked on my iPhone 12 right out of the gate. Instantly. Thaaank you!

That fix didn’t work for me : (

X

Perfect fix! I was going crazy trying to find old photos by flipping back through the text stream!! THANK YOU!!!

how long did it take?