Photos in iMessages/SMS are missing

Good Luck... This has been going on since Sept and in a different thread ..... so now two threads, no fix. And don't bother trying to restore from your computer either... if you didn't recently back up your phone your still going to lose pictures. I also haven't backed up to ICloud because I don't pay extra for the storage.

They need to hire someone that can figure this out. Maybe they should give a little incentive to their Apple employees. $1.00 or $2.00 for every view the thread has, once it's fixed... that would be a nice bonus.. The below thread has 50,232 views and this one has 15552 Views.

Messages Photos Not Showing: iOS 8 on iPhone 6 This thread has 50232 Views

You are right....50,232 views on this thread and still no fix for this with the last 3 IOS Updates. I guess the ringtone was of major importance to get out, but forget about this. Not to mention calendar problems, battery drain, wi-fi issues, etc.

I guess they are preparing for the new watch they are coming out with and they know they will sell millions of them, but me personally I have no use to purchase one of them. People will line up to get one, but not think of the problems with the phones and iPads that Apple doesn't seem to care to fix or just does not care as long as the money is coming in.

I would think they would get their problems fixed before coming out with new stuff or at least acknowledge them would be a nice start. It seems whenever you do a Google Search it is always problems, but not one thing from Apple saying we are working on it. That just tells me they just plain do not care. Sure they beta test all the IOS updates with their developers, but me personally if I was one of them all I would care about is that the application I made worked with the new IOS update. Maybe let people who actually USE the product test it and not charge them from what I heard. They should be paying people to test the IOS updates, but since they sell millions of the new products why do they care?

My guess if sales were to drop off and people went with a different product then maybe they might care. All these views on this thread and not one from Apple I see on here saying we have a problem and are working on it. I wish people would boycott the new watch when it comes out, but you know that will never happen like I wish it would. Plus, with what I just typed I am sure if I come back to this thread Apple will erase what I typed and delete what I typed above.

Get it together Apple.... Fix your problems first before trying to get so advanced and making things worse, but here comes the new Watch soon which I see as more problems in the making.

Thank you jmathery. I just discovered I am having the same problems with the pictures on my phone. Your suggestion to sign into iMessages on another device worked perfectly. I am now saving them all and extremely relieved I did not lose them. Thank you again.

I signed into message on my apple computer. But it actually didn't work. I only had messages and pictures for Nov. and Dec. 2014. I had all my pictures on my phone as of Saturday, Feb. 21, 2015. On Sunday, Feb. 22, 2015 they were gone. But any pictures sent to me since Sunday are on my phone. I can't figure it out. I do have an update iOS 8.1.3. Does anyone know if this fixes the problem or if I should install it? I'm afraid to install it for fear of never getting my pictures back.

Interesting how you see 50,232 views on this thread but I only see 21,815. I wonder why? Could it be that Apple changed the number as some PR tactic? Anyway, I too am very disappointed in the lack of response here. I just switched back to an iPhone (6+) from a Galaxy S4 and not so glad i did at the moment...

Bad news. iOS 8.2 didn't fix it for me.

Anyone else have any joy?

Actually, weirdly some really old pics have appeared but only 5 out of many. I'm sure they weren't there pre 8.2. I want them all back though!

The formal release notes (or earlier beta ones) didn't say anything about 8.2 fixing this. I don't think the fix was slated for 8.2. We'll have to wait for future releases. Hopefully Apple has a better handle on this after all the logs and data we gave them. It's certainly a strange issue.

Those photo's are not lost. You need a strong wifi connection to get those things back. I got mine back through the apple's store wifi connection. Although i spent about 2 hours waiting for everything to restore back. A weak wifi connection or 3g won't do you no good. This was how i fixed my problem. Its simple. If your photos were already backed up, try doing a factory reset and then do a restore from either iCloud or via iTunes but make sure you are on a very good wifi connection. This problem only occurs if you have a lot of videos stored on your iPhone's backup. Keep me posted guys.

Thanks BeeLovedEst but I doubt very much the strength of a wifi connection has anything to do with it.

Unfortunately it seems its a link / path error so the file can't be found. As mentioned this isn't the case on other devices (Messages on my Mac for example) and the files are still found.

I don't think we can do anything until Apple comes out with a fix.

Honestly, its the wifi connection. Like i said earlier this happened to me. I later found out that i had a lot videos which took time to restore when i used my home network. I waited for 5 days and nothing happened. but the moment i went back to the Apple store, re-did the whole restoring process plus the connection, everything restored within 2 hours. I know its very frustrating, i called Apple for support but they couldn't figure out what the problem was..but redoing the whole thing under a very strong network connection, helped me get back my 5000 photos and videos. Just give it a shot.

Hello All,

I am encountering the same problem and I just updated to 8.2 and not only is this problem on my iPhone it all migrated to my OSX iMessages, which is in all honesty ridiculous.

Regarding "solutions" in this thread I would urge non-technical users to refrain from suggesting"solutions" which have nothing to do with the actual problem. The problem is not a wi-fi connection, it is an underlying path problem or database problem, internal to the iMessages app. I havent been able to pin point the issue, but it is an issue nonetheless.

Furthermore, the type of backup is also essential to a "soution". If your backup was on iCloud then yes, you need a **consistent** wi-fi connection to avoid timeouts, and get all your stuff off the cloud. But if your backup is an iTunes backup such as mine, then a wifi connection is totally irrelevant.

Today I noticed the same on iMessages on my mac and know I know for a fact that there is some corruption at the database level. Since it seems that this issue has no common denominator, anyone stumbling upon this thread, backup your images now.

Having an iTunes backup be non-reliable is a huge issue. Please anyone with the same issue keep this thread updated just in case something comes up that solves this problem.

Cheers,

Fotis

Hello once again,

A bit of a follow up on my recent findings.

I don't know about the rest of the users but I will explain my situation and maybe you can relate. I traced the problem down to a faulty backup & restore. The people in this thread that did not change a thing and noticed the problem, please let us know if you are backing up to iCloud.

Anyone backing up with iTunes here is what I found out. After seeing the problem on OSX iMessage I really started freaking out, and thought ok I have to get to the bottom of this. So my first instinct was to check the person "Details" and see if the attachments were available. As it so happens I was able to view the attachments from the "Details" view but not inline in the chat history on OSX iMessage. This led me to the conclusion that the files are there but the links are broken, so I wanted to check if the same was true for the iOS iMessage. So I thought, ok, when was the last time that I know for a fact that I had the photos in my chat history. As it turns out, this was right before I switched phones from 5 -> 6, I had done this about a month ago, so I was lucky enough to have that backup still available in my iTunes backups list. With this information I wanted to check if the attachments were there but not linked, or completely gone.

I used the software listed here (http://www.recovery-android.com/recover-messages-after-upgrading-to-ios-7.html) which allows me to scan the contents of the phone or of an existing backup and it lists the information available in there. First I scaned the backup I restored recently (when the problem first appeared) and after about 30minutes it listed 202 iMessage attachments, it actually allows you see the attachments using the Free Trial so no purchase is necessary, unless you want to extract the information.

I then re-did the procedure with the backup I was sure had the information and it listed 603 attachments. So as it happens the backup was actually corrupted. Now I don't know how iCloud backups work, but maybe between iTunes versions or iOS versions, they messed something up, and the continous backup and restore process had some form of glitch causing this problem.

I ended up restoring the backup with the 603 attachments and all the inline messages where there. After the sync process is complete, in about an hour or so, I am going to backup the phone again, and check that all the attachments are there in that backup.

This may be an acceptable scenario (fix) for anyone that has a recent backup and can confirm the existence of all of their missing attachments using the software linked above.

Best,

Fotis

Hi All,

Long time reader first time poster !

Unfortunately my iphone 5 running 8.1.2 has just fallen into the same category as the rest of the forum string. All SMS attachments bar about 3 out of 600 or so just went missing on me yesterday morning. I was not trying to do any IOS updates at the time however the last thing i done was hit the update all in my app store to update my apps. Which "may" of triggered something ?

Unfortunately the bad news for me is that every single jpeg is completely gone from the phone. My next issue is that Itunes being itunes likes to back up my phone as soon as i connect it and of course overwrites itself which is very clever indeed, there is now a screwed phone and a screwed backup. "lesson learned ... dont let it automagically back up and also remind ones self to perform a manual backup to a new file occasionally.

Being in this position i took a few extra steps to see if they were really gone or not ... SSH access to the phone (you know how) and searched the entire phone for my attachments (find / -name *.jpeg) and 3 were left the rest have completely been removed/deleted !! The folder structure is still there however no content. I since sent a new photo to the phone this morning and perform the same search and its there as it should be.

So Apple ? *** happened to your amazing IOS that has developed some sort of AI and decided to destroy the attachments ?

So reading through this i think the only way back is through a good known back up ... "if you have one and your itunes didnt back up over the last goody"

Unless it moves and renames every file to some secret location they are definitely gone from the phone.

Apple need to address this fault and work out what the crash/fault is that caves the SMS.db in and eats the files .. 😟

If anyone finds the reason or any form of solution please let me know ...

Shannon

Hi,

This might solve the problem of missing pictures in iMessage.

1) turn OFF iMessage

2) hard reboot

3) turn on iMessage

4) reset network settings

This sequens worked on a iPhone 5s 32GB running iOS 8.2

/Nick

Hi Ads_N

i tried almost all of the suggestions listed in this thread. But ended up with the sequence I listed as what worked for me.

I Will suggest that you try one or more of the choices in here at some point it might work.

hope that you end up succeeding in getting the pictures back in iMessage

br, Nick