How to move pictures from messages to gallery on android

Updated: July 5, 2022 | Contains affiliate links

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Sending photos from your phone via a text messages has become very easy and it is one of the main reasons we send text messages in the first place. However, in this article we will explore what to do with pictures we receive in text messages. In other words, let’s talk about how to download message pictures.

How Do You Use Text Message Pictures?

Let’s ask a simple question first: What does it mean to use text message pictures?

These days you can do so many things with text message photos directly from the messaging app. You can post it to different applications like Facebook or Instagram…that’s easy!

But what if you want to save this message photo along with your other photos on your phone? Or how do I download pictures from messages? How about you want to cleanup your text messages but keep a particular message photo?

In these cases you want to save your message images to your phone’s photo collection. Once your message photos are saved to your phone’s local storage, they are safe and you can use them in multiple ways.

Here are the steps for downloading text message pictures to your mobile phone.

1. Download Message Pictures from iPhone iMessage to Photos

On iOS, which is what the iPhones are using, you have two ways for downloading text message photos to the local storage.

How to download pictures from text messages on iPhone? Well, let’s look at it step by step:

1. Open the message you received
2. Tap the photo and hold your finger pressed a couple of seconds until the actions screen comes up.
3. Tap the Save option. Now you can view the message photo with your other photos.

Download message pictures on iPhone by a long press

The second procedure involves the sharing button.

The iPhone has an additional way for saving message images to your phone’s photo gallery. This method is more intuitive and has more sharing options.

1. Open the message you received
2. Tap the photo…just a simple tap and release.
3. You will see the Sharing button on the bottom left now.
4. Tap the Sharing button.
5. Tap Save Image.

Download message pictures on iPhone by simple tap

Once you tap the Share button, you will see the Sharing Image screen where you can choose to save your message photo to your phone’s photo collection.

The sharing screen allows you to download message pictures to your iPhone’s photo gallery

2. Download Message Pictures from Android Messages to Google Photos

On Android there is only one way to save text message images to your phone’s photo gallery. Even though I use an iPhone, I find this procedure easier on the Android.

How to download pictures from text messages on Android? Here it is, step by step:

1. Open the message with the photo
2. Tap the photo
3. Tap the Save icon on the top right.
4. Now you can view this message photo with your other images in Google Photos.

Saving text message images on Android

3. Change Your Message Pictures Metadata

Especially if you receive a text message picture from an Android phone, you will notice that the date of the image is today’s date. If metadata is wrong, you can change picture metadata on your phone. Every digital photo taken by a modern phone has the date when the image was taken embedded in the image file itself (it’s called photo metadata). However, when sending digital photos via Android Message, the photo’s metadata is being stripped away. This includes geotags (image location) and the date when the picture was taken.

This means that in order for your photo to appear nicely according to when the picture was taken, you have to manually change the photo’s date on your computer.

Download Message Pictures with Care

The first impulse is to download all text message images to my phone.  If I receive on my phone, it’s probably from someone I care about, so save it to my phone.  However, practically I found that I never look again at images I received via text messages, unless someone took a picture of my family and I want to save it along with my family pictures.  So, taking an extra second to determine if I actually want to download certain message pictures will help a lot with reducing photo clutter on your phone.

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