How to send pictures on Facebook Messenger Android

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-- Thursday, March 28, 2019

Android users, especially the young, prefer contacting people instantly with social app Messenger rather than calling them. They love the way to chat with text messages, cute stickers, and media files, because it is a quick way to share moments of life. Some are even addicted to doing so. Besides, chatting with an app is free. Different to a call and SMS/MMS, what you need to chat with an app is an available Internet access only. So have you got how to chat online? In this passage, you will see how to share messages/pictures/videos to friends with Facebook messenger on Android.

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Facebook Messenger is designed for users to send messages, photos, and videos to their friends via Wi-Fi and mobile data. Users can type message, send stickers, and audio messages to others. Pictures/videos stored in the phone and instantly taken can be sent with one click.

Step 1 Sign into Facebook Messenger
Connect Android phone to Wi-Fi hotspot or turn on mobile data. Then open Facebook Messenger on your Android phone. And sign into your Facebook account.

Step 2 Set up a Group Chat
If you are intended to send messages, photos, and videos in a group, you can follow steps below and set up a group chat. Otherwise, skip to step 3.

Tap people icon. Then you can choose to create new group for family, dinner plans, for photos, and team. After that, name the group, for example "Best Friends". And you can also take or choose a photo as profile image. Then check people you are going to add to the new group and select "CREATE GROUP" at the upper-right corner.

Step 3 Share Messages/Pictures/Videos
Send Messages:
Tap the three-bar icon on the top. Then choose a contact you are going to share messages, photos, and videos. In the chat box, type a message and click the arrow icon. Your message will be delivered. Also, you are allowed to send vivid stickers to liven up conversation.

Forward Messages:
If you want to forward a sent message to others, long tap on it. Then choose "Forward" in the pop-up note. In the next screen, choose contacts and hit the arrow icon. The message will be forwarded to selected contacts.

Send Pictures/Videos:
To send photos/videos stored in your phone, click the image icon at the tool bar. Then select items from your Android phone and click the arrow icon. If you are going to instantly tap a photo/video and send, click the camera icon, then take a photo/video and hit the arrow icon.

That's it! Besides sending messages, photos, and videos, you can enable a phone call and video call with people. Now enjoy the time with your friends with Facebook Messenger!

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More than a few Facebook Messenger users have had a hard time with media in their messages. Namely, it seems that Facebook Messenger is not sending pictures on Android. Not after multiple tries. We made sure to help affected users resolve this as fast as possible.

There are more than a few reasons why Facebook Messenger won’t send pictures on Android. The first one is server status, which might be down for all or some users. Additionally, the local cache might get corrupted or time/date settings are not right.

To tackle these and other possible culprits for this issue, make sure to go through the list below.

Table of contents:

1. Check permissions
2. Clear cache and data from the Messenger
3. Check Date and Time Settings
4. Reinstall the app
5. Check SD card
6. Leave the Beta program
7. Rollback to an older version of Facebook Messenger

Why won’t Facebook Messenger send pictures?

If Facebook Messenger is not sending pictures, try these solutions:

• Check if the issue is not on Facebook’s side. You can find out more about server status on DownDetector, here, or check the Official Facebook Support page, here.
• Check permissions for Facebook Messenger.
• Clear local data or reinstall the app.
• Leave the beta program or roll back to an older version of Facebook Messenger. You can also go for the Alpha version.

1. Check permissions

The common bug that’s causing this problem usually prevents users from sending pictures or even text messages to users that recently re-activated their Facebook accounts (Facebook Messenger accounts, too). What you should do is simply un-friend that user and add him/her again. If pictures won’t go through after that, continue reading.

Let’s start by checking all permissions to ensure that Facebook Messenger has access to both your locale storage and the SD card. Sometimes, users accidentally dismiss the prompt which asks for storage access. If that’s the case, you won’t be able to send or save images in Facebook Messenger.

With that said, navigate to Settings > Apps > All apps > Facebook Messenger. Once there, make sure that all related permissions are granted. You don’t have to grant Location, Contacts, or SMS permissions.

2. Clear cache and data from the Messenger

The second step is to clear the cache and data from the Messenger app and reset the app that way. Many issues in Android apps can be addressed by clearing the cache and data from the app.

Follow these steps, to clear cache and data from Facebook Messenger:

1. Open Settings.
2. Choose Apps.
3. Tap All apps (App manager or Manage apps).
4. Open Messenger.
5. Tap Storage.
6. Clear cache first and then data.
7. Reboot your device, and log in to your Messenger account again.
8. If that didn’t help, repeat the steps just, this time, clear data instead.
   

3. Check Date and Time Settings

If Facebook Messenger is still not sending pictures on Android, make sure that your time and date are properly set. Like with the majority of instant messengers, media and text messages go to a dedicated server and are later (in a matter of seconds) distributed to recipients.

To ensure that there are no issues with the dedicated servers, you’ll need to have the proper time and date set.

Follow these instructions to check the time and date and set them accordingly:

1. Open Settings.
2. Choose System or Additional settings.
3. Open Date & time.
4. Toggle ON the “Use network-provided time” option.
5. Reboot your device.

4. Reinstall the app

Moving on, you can also try reinstalling the app if the previous steps failed to resolve the problem. There’s no big difference between this and clearing cache and data, but it’s worth a try, especially because you’ll get the latest version of Facebook Messenger.

Here’s how to reinstall Facebook Messenger on Android:

1. Navigate again to Settings > Apps > All apps > Messenger.
2. Uninstall the app and clear the cache and data when prompted.
3. Navigate to Play Store and install the app.
4. Reboot your device.
5. Log in again.

5. Check the SD card

There’s an extra layer of security and system permissions when it comes to accessing external storage. We hope you covered that in the first step we listed here. However, your SD card can still cause issues, due to corruption or if not properly placed in the slot.

If you are unable to access files on the SD card on your Android device from any other app, make sure to format it. For the majority of apps, the better option is formatting SD cards as external storage rather than making the SD card an extension to internal storage.

6. Leave the Beta program

If you are part of the Beta program for Facebook Messenger, make sure to leave it and look for improvements. Early releases are great as they bring new features faster, but the app might be unstable and thus, problems might occur.

If you are not sure how to leave the Beta program for Facebook Messenger, make sure to check these steps:

1. Open Play Store.
2. Search for and open Messenger and scroll down until you reach the You’re a beta tester section.
3. Tap Leave and wait until you are removed from the Beta program.
4. Restart your phone and update Messenger.

7. Rollback to an older version of Facebook Messenger

Finally, if none of the previous steps helped you and Facebook Messenger is still not sending pictures, we suggest using an APK of an older version. With an APK, you can roll back to an older version of Facebook Messenger and address the problem that way. If you’re skeptical about installing an APK, there’s no need to, because APKs are perfectly safe to install on Android (as long as you download it from a reliable source).

Here’s how to do it:

1. Uninstall Facebook Messenger.
2. Navigate to APK Mirror, here, or use any APK aggregator and look for Facebook Messenger.
3. Download the APK. We recommend that the APK is not older than 2 months and that it’s not a Beta release.
4. Run the APK and allow the installation of third-party apps on your device when prompted.
5. Clear cache and data and then sign in with your credentials.

Alternatively, the server might be down for the time being and you can try sending pictures after a couple of hours. Most of the time, just waiting for things to sort them selfs out is the best solution.

And, on that note, we can conclude this article. Thank you for reading, if you want to discuss this article further, but also find even more content, make sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in April 2021. We made sure to revamp it for freshness and accuracy.

Why can't I send pictures on Messenger on my Android?

Why can't I send photos on Messenger?