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atlchamp

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jun 19, 2012
2,056
1,245
Atlanta
I’m suprised no one has stopped in and told you that this has been broken since iCloud messages
I’m suprised no one has stopped in and told you that this has been broken since iCloud messages launched
It’s honestly ridiculous. The feature itself is really great but it needs to work properly. Didn’t this roll out in iOS 12?
 
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Gypsy36

macrumors regular
Mar 23, 2013
197
175
Canada
I’m suprised no one has stopped in and told you that this has been broken since iCloud messages launched

I was just about to do that! I had this problem way back when. Went through all kinds of attempts to fix it and ultimately was told that the “engineers said iMessage is not meant to be a photo storage system. If I want to keep photos, I should save them.”

It wasn’t a great experience.
 

gigapocket1

macrumors 68020
Mar 15, 2009
2,249
1,734
A817D805-BD98-4CC3-88E2-C4A80515E717.jpeg A3E55E56-7FE9-4031-916D-F26FA22AB2E2.jpeg
‘here’s my iCloud message size vs what’s actually on my iPad.. on my 512gb iPhone 11 it’s only around 5gigs...

Their just needs to be a toggle similar to iCloud photos with optimize storage. Or they need the same option on the Mac messages that when you click the info button, you can choose download images/attachments for that user (see more)
 

atlchamp

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jun 19, 2012
2,056
1,245
Atlanta
Hey everyone so I bought an iPhone 12 Pro Max to give it a test drive and I restored from iCloud back up and all of my messages showed up in the info section of the message thread. They still are not showing up on my iPhone 12 pro so I’m thinking about doing a back up and restore on that phone to see if it also works there.
 

titans1127

macrumors 65816
Mar 10, 2009
1,179
414
Hey everyone so I bought an iPhone 12 Pro Max to give it a test drive and I restored from iCloud back up and all of my messages showed up in the info section of the message thread. They still are not showing up on my iPhone 12 pro so I’m thinking about doing a back up and restore on that phone to see if it also works there.
Good to know! Hope it works. I was planning on turning off messages in iCloud overnight tonight to see if it pulls everything in and then re-enable the feature afterwards.
 

atlchamp

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jun 19, 2012
2,056
1,245
Atlanta
Good to know! Hope it works. I was planning on turning off messages in iCloud overnight tonight to see if it pulls everything in and then re-enable the feature afterwards.
I take this back. It worked for some threads but not all smh
 

Starboy786

macrumors newbie
Sep 25, 2019
24
1
Got an iPhone 12 pro Max on IOS 14.2. Same issue no attachments showing up in text threads when you press info except for a couple. All the others only show attachments sent after I started using this phone. No indexing messing showing up either. Tired toggling iMessages on and off in iCloud shows a “uploading to iCloud” bar in messages at the bottom then a “downloading from iCloud” message at the bottom. That all goes away overnight with it being plugged in but nothing comes back. Called Apple care they weren’t sure either had me do a data recovery from iCloud but doubt that does anything.
 
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atlchamp

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jun 19, 2012
2,056
1,245
Atlanta
Got an iPhone 12 pro Max on IOS 14.2. Same issue no attachments showing up in text threads when you press info except for a couple. All the others only show attachments sent after I started using this phone. No indexing messing showing up either. Tired toggling iMessages on and off in iCloud shows a “uploading to iCloud” bar in messages at the bottom then a “downloading from iCloud” message at the bottom. That all goes away overnight with it being plugged in but nothing comes back. Called Apple care they weren’t sure either had me do a data recovery from iCloud but doubt that does anything.
Restore from iCloud back up does absolutely nothing. I’ve already tried that. I feel like AppleCare technicians are just programmed to recommend that in every situation
 

Starboy786

macrumors newbie
Sep 25, 2019
24
1
Co
Restore from iCloud back up does absolutely nothing. I’ve already tried that. I feel like AppleCare technicians are just programmed to recommend that in every situation
Completely agree. I think the issue is with iCloud so restoring from it probably won’t help. Have you tried backing up to iTunes and restoring using that? I’ve read that fixed the issue for a few people
 

titans1127

macrumors 65816
Mar 10, 2009
1,179
414
I made the mistake of turning messages in iCloud off on my 12 Pro last night to let everything download. I turned it back on half way through the night and now I've lost 20 gigs of space again that im struggling to get back. Still didn't fix the issue of all attachments not populating in the info section like I had hoped.
 

Starboy786

macrumors newbie
Sep 25, 2019
24
1
I made the mistake of turning messages in iCloud off on my 12 Pro last night to let everything download. I turned it back on half way through the night and now I've lost 20 gigs of space again that im struggling to get back. Still didn't fix the issue of all attachments not populating in the info section like I had hoped.
Did any attachments show up at all? I know you said not all of them did but maybe some did and that’s why that extra space is missing? Can’t believe this is still an issue. Tons of people had the same issue last year as well.
 

titans1127

macrumors 65816
Mar 10, 2009
1,179
414
Did any attachments show up at all? I know you said not all of them did but maybe some did and that’s why that extra space is missing? Can’t believe this is still an issue. Tons of people had the same issue last year as well.
From what I can tell with my most often texted people, it is still only showing stuff sent and received from when I got the phone 3 weeks ago. Nothing older. When I was playing around with the toggle initially I had the same thing happen and that's how it sorta "fixed" the storage.
 

titans1127

macrumors 65816
Mar 10, 2009
1,179
414
Well it looks like wiping my phone and restoring from iCloud has fixed my issue. I got all of my storage space back and then some and now when I go into my wife's message thread and tap on info, I can scroll down to the bottom and it shows X images in iCloud and a download button. Between my wife and a few others there's probably a couple thousand images so i'm not going to tap on download on any of them to save the space as its not necessary to have them actively on the device.

I notice that under iPhone storage that im back to not having the category breakdown of what's using what but i'm sure that will get fixed again with the next software update. Review large attachments only is showing a few random items but I'll take it.
 
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atlchamp

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jun 19, 2012
2,056
1,245
Atlanta
Well it looks like wiping my phone and restoring from iCloud has fixed my issue. I got all of my storage space back and then some and now when I go into my wife's message thread and tap on info, I can scroll down to the bottom and it shows X images in iCloud and a download button. Between my wife and a few others there's probably a couple thousand images so i'm not going to tap on download on any of them to save the space as its not necessary to have them actively on the device.

I notice that under iPhone storage that im back to not having the category breakdown of what's using what but i'm sure that will get fixed again with the next software update. Review large attachments only is showing a few random items but I'll take it.
I tried that but I didn’t bring back the images and pictures for all the threads just a few
 

gigapocket1

macrumors 68020
Mar 15, 2009
2,249
1,734
So! I just figured out how to download photos and videos from iCloud for messages! The download button is in a very bad place!

 

kmckee6290

macrumors newbie
Nov 16, 2020
1
0
hi everyone. I recently received an iPhone 12 Pro and I set the phone up as brand new. I enabled iMessages and iCloud and I expected all of my text messages pictures videos and links to restore to my device. However when you go to the info section of a text message it only shows a very select few recent photos and not all of the photos. For example in one thread I know there are probably hundreds of pictures however I only see the last three and there is also no area for me to download any additional photos.

furthermore I have disabled and reenabled iMessage in iCloud, let the device “index/update” for days plugged in etc with no updates.

Does anyone have any insight on what I should do or what I can do in the situation? Does anyone have any insight on what I should do or what I can do in the situation
I am having the same issue. I spoke with apple support twice. The first time I spoke with them maybe 3 days or so after I go the pro and noticed the issue. The guy on the phone told me give it a few days more and call back if the pix didn't come through as they take longer sometimes to transfer over. Once I had the phone an entire week and photos and links still didn't appear in the info section I called again. I spoke to a rep for almost 2 hours. I screen-shared my phone with him and we went through all these message settings to make sure they were on both my old device (XS Max) and new device. At one point it seemed like there might be hope as all of a sudden on the messages app it said at the bottom "downloading messages from iCloud". After HOURS that notification went away and the pictures/links STILL didn't come through at all. The rep told me give it a few more days and worst case erase the phone and start again.

By chance did you find a solution? I've now had the phone almost 3 weeks and the pix/links still didn't come through. I didn't erase the phone yet but I'm thinking I might have to give it a shot.
 

atlchamp

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jun 19, 2012
2,056
1,245
Atlanta
I am having the same issue. I spoke with apple support twice. The first time I spoke with them maybe 3 days or so after I go the pro and noticed the issue. The guy on the phone told me give it a few days more and call back if the pix didn't come through as they take longer sometimes to transfer over. Once I had the phone an entire week and photos and links still didn't appear in the info section I called again. I spoke to a rep for almost 2 hours. I screen-shared my phone with him and we went through all these message settings to make sure they were on both my old device (XS Max) and new device. At one point it seemed like there might be hope as all of a sudden on the messages app it said at the bottom "downloading messages from iCloud". After HOURS that notification went away and the pictures/links STILL didn't come through at all. The rep told me give it a few more days and worst case erase the phone and start again.

By chance did you find a solution? I've now had the phone almost 3 weeks and the pix/links still didn't come through. I didn't erase the phone yet but I'm thinking I might have to give it a shot.
Nope smh
 

Starboy786

macrumors newbie
Sep 25, 2019
24
1
So no updates on my 12 pro max still missing the attachments but I decided to reset my 11 pro max and restore it using the iCloud backup i did of my 12 pro max just to see if it would work or give the same issue and all the pictures and attachments show up on it perfectly fine. I even get a little button that says "Download" that brings up the attachments when you go into the info on the message threads. So weird why it didn't work correctly on the new phone. Anyone get it to work on there 12/12 pro??
 
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