If you happen to listen to our radio show, Small Dog Speaks, on WDEV, you may have heard Rebecca and Don answer a question about an issue with iMessages in iOS 7. Apparently, a lot of users have experienced “sent” messages getting stuck in the process without really letting them know that it failed to actually be sent.
If you’re one of these people who has seen this happen, fear not — Apple is on the case. They released the following statement to the Wall Street Journal this past week:
“We are aware of an issue that affects a fraction of a percent of our iMessage users, and we will have a fix available in an upcoming software update. In the meantime, we encourage any users having problems to reference our troubleshooting documents or contact AppleCare to help resolve their issue. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes impacted users.”
But while we await the release of 7.0.3, there are a few things you might be able to do in the meantime. The simplest, and first thing you should do is turn your device off and back on again. This seemed to work for a little bit for some users, but ultimately did not solve the problem in the long run.
Mac Rumors has a better solution:
- Turn off iMessage in Settings > Messages
- Reset network settings in Settings > General > Reset
- Reenable iMessage in Settings > Messages
This is kind of a nasty bug for iPhone users because in the case of sending messages, the message won’t revert to SMS when the iMessage fails to be sent. You might be stuck thinking that you sent a message when really it never went through. Rumors suggest that iOS 7.0.3 might be released as early as next week, and this will hopefully fix this whole iMessage issue.