Hey all —
I just got the new iPhone 18 pro max 512gb and I did a restore from iCloud and now pictures/videos are not downloading within my iMessage! It completely wiped every picture/video in any conversation from Dec 31,2025 to 2020 and I’m quite livid as there was messages from people who are no longer with us.
steps I’ve taken with no success:
- Toggle iMessage off and back on (when I do this it shows pictures/videos from conversations I completely deleted and they disappear when I toggle iCloud messages back on)
- reset network
- toggle WiFi on/off
- hard resets
- download each thread individually (I keep getting an error)
- ive tried everything that has been recommended from other threads
also, the amount of pictures/videos differ from iPad to my iPhone and I am also getting an error on all my Apple devices when trying to download. It has the placeholder in every thread but if I try to click on it I automatically get an error pop up saying unable to download
i really want this fixed as now I’m missing 5 years of my kids lives that lived within my messages, relationships, memories.
I know it’s not a storage issue bc i have 2tb iCloud storage and a brand new 512gb phone. I can post some pictures of the error messages. It says I have 106gb worth of iMessages but even downloading and turning iCloud off for messages it only shows like 40 gb downloads so where’s the rest??
this also happened on my 18 pro max and happened as soon as I updated to iOS 18 I think (whatever one was before 27) but they started to come back.
I am concerned with the difference in amount of pictures within the thread is different among all my devices. I just need this fixed. Any other advice to try!
[Edited by Moderator]