“Those dreaded MMS messages are so frustrating! I can’get them to automatically download, and even when I manually try to download it, sometimes it still doesn’t even work!” This is the problem that many smartphone users go through. MMS messages not automatically downloading is a widespread and extremely frustrating. There’s no telling as to why MMS messages just won’t work how they’re supposed to without any tinkering, but with just a few minutes of your time, you can get your favorite text messaging app retrieving and downloading MMS without a hitch.
It’s not a difficult process, and in most cases, it’s the same series of steps for any text messaging app. And without further ado, here’s how to get MMS messages to download automatically.
Setting up MMS auto-retrieval
Again, setting up MMS auto-retrieval is a quick and easy process. First, open up your text messaging app. Next, in the right hand corner, tap the three-dot menu button and select Settings. Finally, scroll down to auto-retrieve and make sure the box is checked.
While you’re at it, it’s also a good practice to have Group Messaging checked, allowing you to send a MMS message to multiple people and get responses back in one group message over multiple individual responses.
Doing this should encourage your MMS messages to automatically download. However, even after following the prior steps, some people still have trouble with getting MMS messages to download properly. Here are a couple of ways to fix that problem:
1. Shut down, power on
The problem could be that your smartphone just needs to be restarted. It’s normal for technology to get hung up and error out, and while it can happen quite frequently, it can be fixed by quickly restarting or powering your smartphone on and off. To do this, hold down the power button for a few seconds and select Power off. Once powered off, hold down the power button again for a few seconds and let it boot up. Alternatively, hold the power button down for a few seconds. When the menu appears, select Restart. Both of these messages should fix any errors or hang-ups your smartphone is having.
If that didn’t work, you may need to move onto the next step.
2. Out with the old
Sometimes you just have way too many messages saved on your Android device. This can easily clog up your smartphone and cause it to experience some hang-ups. Head on through your list of saved messages and start clearing out text and MMS messages that you no longer need. This will not only free up some space on your Android device, but could fix the problem of having some MMS messages refuse to download as well.
If this didn’t work, it might be time to take some more drastic measures.
3. Hard reset
If the above methods haven’t worked, it might be time to reset your smartphone. Before continuing with a factory reset, you’ll want to make sure all of your data is backed up first. Go ahead and read this handy step-by-step guide on how to backup to the cloud we put together. Alternatively, in most cases, much of your app data is backed up to Google’s servers. You might want to double check on that by going into Settings > Backup and Reset and making sure Back up my data is checked. If so, you can go ahead and follow the below steps.
Head into Settings > Backup and Reset and select Factory data reset. Follow the steps that the reset wizard takes you through, and then when initializing your smartphone again, make sure to select the option for restoring your device over starting fresh.
Closing
These steps should have fixed your woes with MMS messages. One thing to keep in mind is that some MMS issues have to deal with your carrier. For instance, sending an MMS message over 1MB on T-Mobile’s network just won’t work. Likewise, MMS messages sent to you over 1MB will have trouble downloading. If you have a particular picture or video you really want to share, it might be worth uploading it to Facebook or another social networking service and sharing it with your friends and family there.
If you’re still having trouble retrieving and sending MMS messages, it might be worth contacting your carrier to see if there are any deeper, underlying issues at hand. Otherwise, if we helped you fix your issue, be sure to leave us a comment below!
Come comment on this article: How to automatically receive MMS picture messages
Visit TalkAndroid for Android news, Android guides, and much more!
