Contact Photos gone in Message app on MacOS (screenshot inside)

[Phat^Trance]

Just restarted my MacOS and noticed that most of my contact photos are gone in the message app. This was working fine since i bought my M1 mac mini.

Does anyone know how i can fix this? Forcing a icloud sync doesnt solve the problem. And login out and then login on icloud doesnt fix the problem either.

Contact photos on my iPhone 13 pro max is fine (they are all there), but on both my macbook and mac mini are mostly gone!

 

[ischack]

Just so that you know, you are not alone: I'm experiencing the exact same thing. And it's been getting worse of the last week or two, meaning: more and more Contact photos disappeared. And it also is the case, that the Contact photos remain untouched on my iPhone and iPad.

I've been going through the affected contacts and cannot recognize any rule or system. Apparantly, random contacts get robbed of their photo.

Also, this does not exclusively affect contacts with Apple devices. My first thought was, it might have to do with Apples "new" feature to share contact photos with others. But I have at least two contacts who only use Linux/Windows machines and Android phones and tablets.

Here's what I tried so far:
– Deactivating the contacts sync feature in the iCloud settings on my Mac (and re-enabling it, of course).
– Signing out of my iCloud account on my Mac (and signing back in, after a reboot).
– Starting the Mac in Safe Mode.
– Manually deleting the actual address book files on the Mac. They were recreated (from iCloud) as soon as I opend the Contacts app, however still missing the same contact photos as before.

Also, this didn't start with the latest version of Sonoma (14.3). OP's entry is about a week older and least I wasn't using the (public) beta.

 

[ischack]

OK, and now it's completely falling apart. The two selected blue entries are the same person. All conversations with “phone numbers” do, of course, have full contact cards with names on them. And as you see, several contacts lost their fotos (top left, the second from the top with a blue unread dot in front of it) and the one below Anja. Heavens!

 

[ha1o2surfer]

I experience the same thing, been getting worse the past week.

 

[ischack]

New possible solutions I tried (without success):
– Creating a new user on the Mac and connecting it with my iCloud account
– Re-installing macOS (without deleting anything)

Next step is probably to completely wipe the Mac and set it up a) using a time machine backup and then b) as a completely new machine (which I neither have the time nor the patience for right now).

 

[Ben J.]

I've experienced this. I don't remember the exact details on how I fixed it, but it had to do with disabling contacts in icloud sync settings, and letting my messages, contact apps etc. use my google account (already enabled) to sync these. I haven't re-enabled contacts in icloud sync settings. FWIW.

 

[ischack]

Another update with a (possible) solution.

Re-installing macOS did change something after all: This morning, contacts whose pictures were gone (see: the person below “Anja” in my screenshot above), were no longer shown with no graphic at all, but with the typical placeholder initials – AM for Alex Merks for example.

I was now able to add a new contact picture to those contacts. Moments later (OK, maybe a couple of minutes) those changes propagated to my iPhone and iPad. Opening those contacts' contact infos from the Messages app on the iPhone allowed me to revert the contact photo back to the one it had before (see: the screenshot in this post).

Since only about 12 contacts (out of hundreds) seemed to be affected, I see this way (re-installing macOS, changing the photo manually, having Messages on the iPhone change it back) as a solution.

However, I'll keep an eye on this and see, if this behaviour returns. By now I also have a support case with Apple on that matter.

 

[Phat^Trance]

i tried to add new posters / contact images via my iphone, and they did sync to both my mac mini and macbook, but after a day or so the contact images on my macs were back to blank images again.

FFS WTF is going on???

 

[ischack]

Turns out I celebrated too early. Yesterday I talked on a podcast about the problem and a (possible) solution. Today I'm back to square one with several contacts' pictures missing in the manner shown before. Meh.

 

[Phat^Trance]

Turns out I celebrated too early. Yesterday I talked on a podcast about the problem and a (possible) solution. Today I'm back to square one with several contacts' pictures missing in the manner shown before. Meh.

this is so random :/

 

[HDJulie]

Did anyone figure this out? I've had the same issue, though it had been weeks since the first one. The first time it happened, it was one contact. I tried several things that didn't work. One day, the picture was back. I just now have 2 new ones that have no contact photo.

 

[Phat^Trance]

Did anyone figure this out? I've had the same issue, though it had been weeks since the first one. The first time it happened, it was one contact. I tried several things that didn't work. One day, the picture was back. I just now have 2 new ones that have no contact photo.

I still have this problem :/

 

[travisll]

FWIW this is happening to me also, started on my mac at the office and has now started on my MacBook Pro.
I will try a wipe and restore tonight and see what happens on my MBP.

 

[jandro]

This fix worked for me (macOS 14.4.1):

1. Quit Messages and Contacts
2. Navigate to the folder `~/Library/Application Support` in Finder (⇧⌘G, then paste that in)
3. Rename the folder `AddressBook` to something like `AddressBook_old` (Basically saving it as a backup, but removing it from the expected location.)
4. Open the Contacts app on your Mac, and it should be missing all your iCloud contacts. Leave it open for a few minutes (your time may vary), and it'll start pulling in your contacts data from iCloud.
5. Open Messages and see that the images are restored. Note: it took about 5 minutes for me to see everything restored how I expected it to.

If for whatever reason something goes wrong and this messes up your local contacts, just quit Contacts again, delete the `AddressBook` folder and rename `AddressBook_old` to `AddressBook` to restore it to how it was before going through these steps.

Full credit goes to this Reddit comment:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/15et3h9/_/ks51ip0

Sadly, I've done this in the past and it worked and recently it's started happening again. I went through the steps and it fixed it again, but I'm sure it'll inevitably get corrupted again in the future and I'll need to do this fix all over again.

 

[HDJulie]

I gave it a try this morning. I was missing two contact pictures. The first time that I did it, one of the contacts at least showed the generic circle with the initials, while the other still showed nothing. I tried it again about 30 minutes later & am back to no picture for either of them.

 

[trickyslip]

I'm just adding the questionably helpful "Yup, same thing here" post. I tried all the things above before arriving at this thread. I can't quite say I am glad it's only happening to me.

 

[Phat^Trance]

And today when i started my Mac, my contact photos was gone again for around 50% of my contacts on my mac (iPhone still intact). WTF is going on and why havent this been fixed yet?

So fricking annoying

 

[Phat^Trance]

OMG this is so annoying. I decided to give up waiting for a fix and re-added all my contacts photos again (by updating them on my iphone, one by one) and they all got synced perfectly to my macs, and now 2 weeks later both my macs switched back to random images (with majority of them missing icons).

FFS APPLE!!!

 

[Phat^Trance]

i found out what was causing this on my Mac! It was Outlook! even tho i had the outlook contact sync setting set to off, it somehow removed the contact photos on my macs.
I uninstalled outlook 3 days ago and one day later all my contact photos was synced back correctly on both my macs!

 

[HDJulie]

Outlook removed ALL contact photos, or just some.
Where is the setting for contact sync? Is that an Outlook thing, or an Apple thing

 

[Phat^Trance]

Outlook removed ALL contact photos, or just some.
Where is the setting for contact sync? Is that an Outlook thing, or an Apple thing

it removed majority of contact PHOTOS, nothing more. The setting for this is in outlook settings, but it doesnt help, ive already set the "contact sync" to off in outlook.
Im so glad i found the problem, i just uninstalled outlook and it seem to be working fine now.

 

[HDJulie]

I’ve updated the photos on both contacts that had them missing. On one, I’ve set it to keep my custom photo & on the other I’ve set it to update automatically. I’m waiting to see if one or both go away again

 

[Phat^Trance]

I’ve updated the photos on both contacts that had them missing. On one, I’ve set it to keep my custom photo & on the other I’ve set it to update automatically. I’m waiting to see if one or both go away again

at first,it will look like its working, but a few weeks later you suddenly see that its starting to switch photos again.

 

[HDJulie]

I'll report back when it does

 

[RedpackCdA]

Just restarted my MacOS and noticed that most of my contact photos are gone in the message app. This was working fine since i bought my M1 mac mini.

Does anyone know how i can fix this? Forcing a icloud sync doesnt solve the problem. And login out and then login on icloud doesnt fix the problem either.

Contact photos on my iPhone 13 pro max is fine (they are all there), but on both my macbook and mac mini are mostly gone!


View attachment 2336822

I found linking contacts on the contacts app brought back their pictures to the iMessage app.