For the past couple years, I’ve noticed a weird bug on Apple’s Messages app – specifically to do with images. I’ve been hoping that Apple would get around to fixing it for the longest time, but they haven’t thus far.
Essentially, if you send an AVIF image file on iMessage, it won’t render properly. AVIF is an increasingly popular image format, so it’s a little annoying.
However, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It’d be one thing if Apple just didn’t support the file format. But, for some bizarre reason, it shows in a small window, with no way of expanding the preview. As a result, you just have a really tiny image on your screen that you cant properly look at.
It behaves this way on both iOS and macOS. You can even properly see the AVIF image in the Message send preview, so you’d never suspect anything prior to sending an image.
It’d be one thing if Apple didn’t support AVIF at all, but they do. Apple implemented support for AVIF image files in Safari in iOS 16, over two years ago.
For whatever reason, they just haven’t gotten around to supporting it in iMessage, even though the AVIF files are visible to users. There’s just no way to properly view them.
This experience is weird, and I sincerely hope Apple gets around to fixing it soon. AVIFs are supported in Safari and Photos, so there’s nothing stopping users from sending them on iMessage. They’ll never render properly, and you end up in a weird situation where you sent an image that isn’t viewable. It’s annoying.
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