iMessage is not showing contact pictures - ios9

i had the same issue & it was driving me crazy because I really wanted to see the pics. If your display view is set to zoom it will disable it. Try this

Settings > display & brightness > display zoom > click view > select standard

this should fix your issue although I really like the zoomed feature I like seeing my contact photos better

Hope this helped

This fix worked for me. Others have said to switch from zoomed view to standard view but this didn't work for me because I was already on standard view. What I tried was changing TO zoomed view from standard and then switching back to standard. My pics came back! I don't know if it is a permanent fix or not because I just did it. It's definitely worth a shot!

How? I don't have that

What it doesn't show anything after that?

My display setting is already Standard and I see the circles for the photos, but the photos on SOME (not all) contacts are not being displayed. Also, my iPhone (which is a brand new 6S, restored from the backup of my previous phone) is the only device with the problem; the same conversation threads on my iPad (also iOS 9.0.2) shows the photos just fine. Any clues?

I Have this issue and was already in standard view. I've switched back and forth and nothing. No contact bubbles 😟 I have the new 6s Plus 64gb

I'm having the same exact problem... Have you found a solution?

this is how I fixed it:

I shared the contact to myself over text from my iphone where the photo was displaying correctly.

Then opened it with iMessage on my macbook. When you accept the contact click Review Duplicate and in the top pick "Keep new".

it's a workaround I guess but it does the trick

fix this Apple! 🙂

I have the problem where i'm not zoomed, so I see the circles, but none of the photos that used to show up, and are still in my iMac contacts are showing on the phone.

I turned off contacts in iCloud on the phone and turned it on again.

Seems to have fixed it.

This helped me partially. I have an iPhone 6s. All of my contact pictures are not showing up. I've turned contacts off and on a few times and no change. For example, on the favorites screen, there are only initials displayed. But when I hit the information icon for each person, the picture is then shown. Very frustrating!!!

Fix I have for Iphone 6S

Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calender > ICloud Account Tab

Go down to the Contacts tab and turn it off. Iphone should ask "What would you like to do with the previously synced iCloud contacts on your iPhone?" Hit "Keep on Phone". After that, hit the Contacts tab again to turn it back on and it should prompt you to "Merge" the Contacts information from the iPhone with the iCloud. This fixed my problem.

Thanks but this didn't work for me even after several restarts of iMessages and the iPhone itself

My display setting is already Standard and I see the circles for the photos with the initials inside. Alot of my contacts are linked to facebook but it wont pull in their photos. When you go into the details for contacts under fb it has their name but once you click on it it just goes to my fb feed. Any Ideas whats going on???

Yeah, this is an intermittent problem for me too. Certain contacts occasionally lose their picture in Messages. Only certain ones - others never show the problem. The photo is in Contacts and shows up properly in Mail for example. This never happens on my iPad Air 2 or MacBook Air. Only my iPhone 6S.

The simplest workaround I've found is to just add a bogus phone number to the contact. That seems force a resync. It doesn't work for any other contact info - you must add or remove a phone number. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be a permanent fix - I don't know if the other options presented above prevent a recurrence.

No question this is a bug but either Apple is denying it or not putting effort into fixing it. Very annoying. I'm also told they don't read these forums, so likely they don't get this feedback either 😟