iOS 26: Messages photos missing from Photos tab on iPhone
I’ve had all my messages kept on my phone since 2016. I updated to IOS26 on its release date back in September. Since then, in each message thread, when I click the contact, all the photos are not in the photo tab. Sometimes the tab appears, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the “download ___ photos from iCloud” shows, sometimes it doesn’t, and when it does, pressing it doesn’t download anything. I can scroll the messages and see the photos but they are not present in the photo tab under the contact name. These are not photos I’ve taken, but received from contacts so no they are not going to be found in my photos app or online at iCloud.com.
I’ve done the Siri search toggle, I’ve clicked sync a million times it feels like in settings for messages, I’ve toggled the use messages on this device toggle many times, I keep getting told “it’s a sync issue in the message app and will sometimes take 24hours” blah blah time but it’s been “syncing” since September 15th when I updated my phone. The photos are important that I don’t need to save to my device because I keep my messages. Scrolling in the messages is time consuming for years of texts when I need to be able to just scroll the photos tab in the contact. It’s not contact specific btw, it’s every message thread.
I don’t have a previous backup to restore to as my iCloud backups daily on my device. I have over 1TB of data left on my plan so not that either.
When will apple fix this known bug because it seems I’m not the only one having this issue.
iPhone 17 Pro Max, iOS 26
on your iPhone.