Photos in iMessages/SMS are missing

Glad to hear Apple is acknowleging it as an issue and working on it, hopefully they will get a fix on it.

I'm curious why some people who lose their pictures have the place holder change to a folder icon while others are question marks? Not sure I understand that, possibly multiple photos within one message? Not sure how those are saved internally. Mine all changed to question marks. I was able to see them under the iphone extractor on my backup, so at least I know the pictures are still there.

Also, I believe mine disappeared after a reboot / power cycle as well, like one of the previous posters mentioned. Certainly something to do with 8.1 upgrade.

Also, it is not iphone 6 specific, I had the same problem on my iphone 5 when I upgraded, then did a backup and restore when I got my iphone 6 and they were still in the same state. I was half tempted to restore from an older backup, but as I'm not as religious as I should be about backing up, that backup is quite a ways back and wouldn't have the same text messages I'm looking for anyway.

Guess I'll just wait for Apple to release a fix, hopefully it's soon.

My iPhone 4s exhibited the same issue shortly after receiving a photo shared from a friend standing beside me on January 10th around 7pmCST. The photo was sent from a Samsung 5 to my iPhone 4s. The photo was visible for about 1-4 hours that day, then all my photos in messages reverted to the question mark icon. It may only be a coincidence, but needs investigated. I've had iPhones from the beginning of the first release, but am growing tired of their rigid structure, inability to display formats, etc just because they refuse to be versitale. I would have a 5 or 6, but am too disappointed in the upgrades to commit. I like the product mostly and will watch for one more upgrade improvement to decide to stay or move on. Focus Apple, grow the product or go away like Motorola and Blsckberry.

I have the same issue with an iPhone 4S and iOS 8.1.2. All photos disappeared this WE shortly after I reactivated iMessage last week.

New photos I received since seem unaffected.

Unfortunately I discovered the issue after synching, and with only the last backup available there is nothing I can do to solve this. Very frustrating.

I was able to fix the issue. After trying to restore a backup I found I was still having the same issue so I assumed it was a corrupted IOS software. I connected my phone to my computer and restored (this replaces the IOS software unlike a regular restore from the phone) and I installed my backup and this time everything worked fine. I assume something corrupts in the IOS that causes the issue so replacing the IOS fixes it, at least it worked for me.

This started happening to me on 1/9/15. I didn't upgrade or change anything on my iPhone. I'm still using an iPhone 5, 64GB (with about 35GB of free space available) with iOS 8.1.2. All the workarounds listed here didn't work for me either (iMessage off/on, reset network settings, hard reset, soft reset, etc). I don't have any other device associated to my iPhone/iCloud account. I don't own a MAC or an iPad. From what I've read here, hopefully the images are still available since others have said that their images show up on their iPad's and/or MAC's iMessage windows. I also sent a message to Apple Support complaining about the same bug. Hopefully this gets fixed soon!!

Hi Whitogreen!

I can understand your frustration when it comes to pictures that seems to be missing and not loading correctly.

You mentioned that you use Photos in iCloud.

If you go into settings>iCloud>photos on your iPhone, do you have iCloud photo library activated?

This is a great feature of having all your pictures uploaded to iCloud. In here, do you have the "Optimize iPhone storage" (this might be a little different in your language).

If you have it turned on, can your turn it off, and say yes if it asks you if you want to download full versions of your pictures.

Yep, same here, upgraded to 8.1.3 and no change...

Apple,

at least address the issue here and acknowledge that it is an issue and keep us informed.

Would like to know if you have at least identified the root cause of the issue and when you anticipate rolling out a fix for it.

Just an FYI for some of the posters here, this has nothing at all to do with iphone 5, 5s, vs iPhone 6, this is a software bug... I had the same issue on my iphone 5 before upgrading to iphone 6. Seems to have happened around IOS 8 upgrade from IOS 7. Possibly IOS 8.0.1.

I'm having the same issue. It's so frustrating! I had a client send me photos for a project I am working on, then when I finally finished other business and was ready to begin this project, the photos had disappeared! (In about a week) I can't call him back and ask to re-send. I'm hosed. Please Apple, look into this! You can't sell us on the product and then ignore an issue that would automatically disqualify the product from real usage. I'm a loyal Apple product user, have been for over 30 years. This is just not right.

I recently checked my messages on my iPhone 6 and found all of my attached photos deleted. It happened overnight, as I was able to access these photos last night. This is an odd case, I have never seen anything like this. I hope these photos are saved on Apple's servers and hopefully will be able to restore these photos to our phones. I backed up my phone and used a iPhone backup extractor to see if I could get the photos back just in case the photos were unlinked. No dice. The photos are deleted. Also I gained back like 1 GB of space on my phone. I checked a few days ago and I had ~39 GB left, now I have ~40 GB left. Apple somehow managed to delete our SMS photos.... Please fix this. Or give us an explanation.

I haven't changed SIM and I'm quite certain that iMessage has been turned off and on throughout the 2+ years I've had my iPhone-5 and I only started having this issue on Jan 9th of this year. However, my phone battery has definitely run its course. I lose reliable charge at about 28%. From there, it drops to 11% to sometimes lower or all the way to 1% prior to just dying. I don't know how that could affect it but I'm also not sure what's causing this bug.

Now that you mention this. Right before I lost my attachments, my phone had ran out of batteries. I actually let this happen because I usually let my battery drain out once a month to maintain the battery life. This might actually be why it happened. Can anyone else confirm this?

Just as an FYI,

I was just contacted by Apple to request some additional information on the issue, so at least it sounds like they are researching the issue, which is good for us.

The initial customer service rep basically made it sound like it was my fault for not saving the attachment to my camera roll, I informed her that , probably similar to you, I keep most of the attachments I receive in the sms's to keep them sorted based on who sent them, if it's something I want to share with another person, then I'll save it to the camera roll.

Anyway, just thought I would share with you that Apple is starting to reach out and gather some information so hopefully with all of the information, they can debug and deploy a fix ... sure would like to have access to those photos again

--John

I also spoke with a rep yesterday and they told me they are aware of this issue and it is a known issue in ios 8. This bug is similar to th ringtones disappearing bug. I'm glad they're looking into this. And hopefully none of our attachments are actually lost. They also told me it's best not to delete any messages atm.

I think the battery dying might have caused the problem for me but I couldn't be sure at all.

Great news it sounds like Apple are looking into it anyhow!

I also saw 'Apple today seeded the fifth beta of iOS 8.2 to developers'

Fingers crossed.

Just keeping everyone in the loop here.

Apple engineering contacted me last night and I spent about an hour on the phone with them.

They provided me with a debugging profile and installed it on my phone and sent them logs via a secure apple ftp site to help them debug.

Also, it sounds like the issue is also being observed internally by Apple employees although they have not been able to consistently reproduce the issue.

I'm glad they are actively working on the issue and debugging, but since it doesn't sound like they have a good grasp on the issue just yet, I wouldn't hold my breath for the fix to be in the pending 8.2 release.

Still hoping for a fix in one of the upcoming releases

--John