Bug Fix

Clear errors when a photo can't be sent

What’s Fixed

Sending a text with a photo attached could fail with Internal Server Error, with
no indication of what went wrong or whether the message had gone out. A text
without a photo to the same person worked normally, which made the failure look
random.

The cause was on our side: if the photo could not be uploaded to storage — an
unreachable bucket, a connection dropped partway through a large photo — nothing
handled that failure, so the app received a generic server error instead of
something it could explain.

What changed

  • A photo that fails to upload now returns a clear message — “We could not
    upload every image. Nothing was sent; please try again.”
    — and no partial
    message is saved, so retrying is safe.
  • A malformed attachment is rejected up front with a specific reason instead of a
    generic server error.
  • Replying with a photo from an inbox conversation no longer sends the reply as
    text-only when the photo can’t be prepared. Previously the image could be
    silently dropped while the message was still recorded as sent; now the reply is
    rejected so you know to try again.
  • This applies to every place you can attach a photo to a message: a contact’s
    text conversation, an inbox reply, a group conversation, and iMessage lines.