For any messages with pictures in my phone that are older than about 1 day, my iPhone seems to "un-download" the picture when I'm viewing the message in Messages and gives me an option to Tap To Download for an image that I already downloaded yesterday. After another day passes it'll once again be "un-downloaded" (sorry I don't have a better term for it).
This is rather annoying to constantly have to redownload the same photos.
How do I stop my phone from "un-downloading" the message's picture attachments?
I'm on an iPhone 8 running iOs 14.5.1. (And yes, I know I could save the image to my phone, but that also seems unnecessary.)
Best Answer
When you have iMessage iCloud Syncing enabled (this switch is located in iCloud settings, as opposed to iMessage settings, your device will remove downloads since they're stored in your iCloud account. This is done to keep your local storage space available.
If you turn off this feature, your phone will probably download your messages. However, if you don't have enough space I do not know what solution it will propose.
In theory, if you have sufficient space, iMessage iCloud Syncing will not remove your local file downloads.