Group texts from iPhone are sent individually

[neilr_]

For about a week now, my texts (from an iPhone on iOS 17.5) to a group of mixed iPhones and Androids are not being received in the group chat. Instead, everyone receives the message as if I’d sent it directly to them. I am not receiving any messages sent to the group chat. I’ve confirmed this happens with multiple group chats and I believe I’m the only one in Visible. 

This feels similar to a complaint from @GrandmasterJim  late last year (can’t link because Visible says “it’s a bad word”). 

Messages sent to an all-iPhone group are sent and received as expected.

Anyone else?

[DeanKevin64 · Accepted solution]

Ask the android users that are in the group to check the message settings(then advanced settings) on their phone and see if the "send an MMS reply to all recipients(group MMS)" dot is marked and not send an SMS to all recipients and get individual replies. From my understanding if the latter is selected on an Android phone it sends individual texts to each person as a mass text and not in group form. This is on a Motorola Android phone using Google messages and not sure if Samsung, Pixel or other brand of Android devices settings offer the same options, it might be dependent on texting app but think the few different texting apps I tried were the same.

I am not familiar with iPhones so if yours is also sending individual texts try looking for a similar setting. Hopefully a user here with an iPhone will chime in and help. 

Good luck and hope you get it fixed!

[neilr_]

I found this Apple support document, which had this to say about SMS group messages

Group SMS messages don’t support multimedia attachments, like photos or videos. All responses in a group SMS are sent as individual text messages and the recipients can’t see the other responses from the group.

Turns out that I had MMS messaging disabled, which I think happened while I was troubleshooting a different messaging issue. So, your underlying answer was correct - the iPhone setting was not very clear about the practical effects.

[DeanKevin64]

Glad you got it figured out. Hard to get answers on this forum because there is not much traffic these days and my knowledge of iPhones are nil.

[cjsantee]

Writing here because I just had the same issue with messaging from an iPhone to group chats with Android users. What fixed it for me was going to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Reset > Reset All Settings

After doing this group chats started working again. Every other troubleshooting step three different support agents at Visible had me try did not work. Hope this helps someone else!