Why You Can’t Send Photos Through Text Messages on Android (And How to Fix It)

If you have an Android phone, you’ve probably been there: You take the perfect photo, find a funny GIF or meme, and want to share it with your family or friends. But when you hit “send” to share it via text message, it doesn’t go through. You try to fix the problem. Maybe you change a few settings or restart your phone, hoping for a quick fix, but nothing seems to work. Even the best Android phones for people who love taking photos can experience this frustrating issue.

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While some people have turned to third-party messaging apps like WhatsApp to improve their messaging experience, many of us still rely on text messaging to communicate with at least some of our contacts. There can be a number of issues when you can’t send messages on your Android phone or it won’t send photos, including connectivity issues and incorrect messaging settings. If you’re dealing with this issue, you’ll want to resolve it quickly, and fortunately, there are a few simple fixes you can try.

If you don’t have an internet connection, you won’t be able to send photos to your Android contacts. While this may seem obvious, there are times when you may not realize your phone has lost its connection. Factors like poor signal strength, limited data, or a poor Wi-Fi connection can all stop your phone from sending photos via text message.

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If you don’t have a stable internet connection, you’ll have trouble sending and receiving photos via text messages. You can check your phone’s Wi-Fi and cellular network connections in the upper right corner of your phone. If you see that the icons show a weak or no connection, this may be the reason why your photos aren’t sending. You can try moving to a location with better reception, reconnecting to your Wi-Fi or cellular network, turning airplane mode on and off, or restarting your phone to get things working again.

It’s also important to note that Android uses two messaging systems to send photos: MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) and the more advanced RCS (Rich Communication Services). You won’t be able to send text photos unless you enable one of these features on your phone. You also need to stay within the 300KB file size limit for MMS. You also need to have mobile data turned on to send MMS messages. You can send higher-quality images over Wi-Fi using RCS, but both you and the person you’re messaging must have RCS enabled on their phones, and both of your wireless carriers must support it.

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Before you do anything else, you should confirm that you have activated MMS and/or RCS in your messaging app. Follow these steps to check your MMS settings in Google Messages:

1. Open Google News.
2. Click on your profile picture in the upper right corner of the screen.
3. Click the gear icon to open your messaging settings.
4. Enable the MMS radio button.

To check your RCS settings in the Google News app, follow these steps:

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1. Open Google News.
2. Click on your profile picture in the upper right corner of the screen.
3. Select Message Settings and press General.
4. Click RCS Chats and toggle the Enable RCS Chats button to the On position.

Once you have enabled MMS and RCS, you can switch between them depending on network availability and the size of the photos you are sending. If you are still unable to send messages after enabling MMS and RCS, corrupt data in the Messages app may be causing the issue, and clearing the app’s cache or data may help resolve the issue. You can do this by going to Settings > Apps > Messages > Storage, then clearing the cache and data.

If the MMS settings are not configured correctly or the network settings are corrupted, resetting the network and Access Point Name (APN) settings may solve the problem.

To reset APN settings, follow these steps:

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Click SIM Cards, scroll down, and click Access Point Names.
3. Click on the three vertical dots in the right corner of the screen.
4. Select Restore Default Values.

If you’ve tried all of the above steps and still can’t send photos via text message, try restarting your phone, installing updates to the Messages app, or, as a last resort, performing a full factory reset.

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