When I send pictures in iMessage randomly photo thumbnails will load, but when you click on the picture it's black and just tells the photo size. Does anyone know what's going on, or how to fix it?
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iMessage photos not loading
- Thread starter kirbysmartsdawg
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Alrighty man, time to get my 'genius' mind on. I will ask you a series of questions to rule this out:
- Had you attempted a restart or force restart of your iPhone 16 Pro?
- Is the recipient using an older version of iOS (15.xx or earlier) of where you are sending the pictures?
- Are you sending a Live Photo with enhancements such as Loop, Bounce, or Long Exposure? Has it been edited in any way?
- Is the media a Spatial Photo or Video taken on your iPhone? These types of media are made to jump in life with depth and dimension when shown on Apple Vision Pro.
1. I have done a hard restart at least twice.
2. None of the recipients are on anything less than iOS 17. Most are on 18.
2. They are Live Photos, but no enhancements. Just simple Live Photos.
2. None of them are spatial photos or videos.
The strange thing is that I can email them, but I can't send them through the Messages app. It's random which pictures won’t go through; some work, while others do not.
I updated my older iPhone to iOS 18.1 beta to check if it was a problem with iOS 18.0.1, but the issue persists. However, I realize that whatever problem affects 18.0.1 will likely also impact 18.1.
For reference, this issue did not occur before iOS 18.0.1.
quite interesting.
Were all the pictures downloaded from iCloud?
quite interesting. 
Were all the pictures downloaded from iCloud?
What do you mean by “downloaded”? I have all my pictures backed up to iCloud, but they were originally taken with my phone, so they were just pulled from my camera roll.
If you’re using iCloud Photo Library in Optimize mode, they are not necessarily “just pulled from your camera roll.” Are you Optimized, or are you set to “Download and keep originals”?
If it had a loading wheel then the picture is loading form your iCloud Photos. You are correct that these only apply to pics transferred or restored from your old iPhone(s) or an iPad, or w/ Optimized as it offloads the pictures. MB.
As it is my first time solving a case as complex as this bug, I found a source that further explains the underlying causes of this bug including the amount of storage space in your iPhone. If you recently did an update or downloaded so many apps/data (especially the Apple Intelligence models, that takes a couple of GB!) then the images may fail to load.
I will also scour around YouTube to see if anyone else has been experiencing this. Most results I see are empty iMessage bubbles without any pictures.
Same, when this happens on me twice a restart/force restart resolved it. In your case, this one is particularly complex. Had you read and followed all conditions listed to troubleshoot it?
Yes, I came across that article yesterday. It seems there’s something in the file of the affected pictures that’s causing them to fail to load in iMessage. Now, whenever I try to include one of those images in a message, I just get an error. However, none of the pictures I took yesterday had this issue, so perhaps it’s been resolved.
That’s a promising sign! Let us know if it persists again with this bug. Case closed!