Disable MMS/Texting over WiFi

I went ahead and downloaded an app that does backup to my Google drive.  It works well and I can access the backed up messages and attachments through it.  That way I can save any pictures I’d like to save.

After backing up and verifying that it worked, I went through the fairly laborious job of deleting all the texts, including spam and blocked, from my phone.  That took a few minutes but now it’s done.

The next step is to see if all that had any effect on my “failure to send” and “unable to download” problem.  I’ll report back here with anything I learn.

Thanks again to all for the help.

Well, I’m not the OP, but I do use Google’s messaging app.  I can confirm there’s no easy way to do what we used to be able to do including “auto delete” messages that are older than a specified age. 

If anyone here knows if there is an “app for that”, please advise.  Having to manually clean up old SMS and MMS messages is a pain.

I haven’t had any MMS problems for awhile now, but I’m not willing to declare my problem solved quite yet.

Again, thanks to all for he help.

I’m using the Android app and it does not have this functionality.  Neither Textra nor the T-Mobile app does.  I’ve been poking through Google searches and searches in the Play Store and I’ve not found anything.  Something changed a few years back; it used to be possible.  Evidently you can do this with an iPhone today.

OP in this case is your OnePlus and not the Original Poster

Pulse offers the function.  Google/Android Messages should also have the option, just under a different name.  

I’ll have a look at Pulse.  One of the reasons I use the Android app is that I can pair it with messages.google.com and use my computer to send and receive messages.  I find that quite convenient.  That won’t work with Pulse.

And I can assure you that none of the messaging apps I’ve tried so far have the functionality to auto delete messages past a certain age.

you know..i have never tried Digits..which you can use the same way and use a computer or your device...but im wondering if there is a auto delete option in there?

Pulse is not the default app for my device though.  Just my preferred choice.  It might be worth checking out if auto deleting messages after a certain period of time is needed.

I just had a closer look at Textra, and it does have the ability to set the number of messages to “keep”, with separate setting for “text” and “media”.  I’m not sure exactly how it works, but I may give it a trial.  If I do that, I’ll see if I can also get Microsoft’s “My Phone” app working to use with my laptop.  I’ve tried it before with very limited success.

If my problem with MMS is really due to too many saved messages, then it’s really quite annoying that Google has taken away the ability to manage that number “automatically”.  I haven’t consciously managed text messages for years.

I’ll have a look at the lock option in a bit.  Thanks for the suggestion.  I do have a “pro” license for Textra.  I used to use it all the time and I like it, but a couple of the recent improvements to the Android app caused me to quit using it (iPhone emoji reactions and chat functionality).  But now apparently Textra does at least one thing that the Android app doesn’t (how many messages to keep), so I’ll use it for awhile.

I’ve installed “Phone Link” again and we’ll see how long it works.  I have not had good luck with it.

As far as memory is concerned, the system currently reports 5.43 GB average use out of 8.00 +3.00 GB.

When I backed up my SMS and MMS messages a couple hours ago, there were more than 64,000 of them backed up.  That seemed like a lot to me!

Here's another update on my recent experiences.

I have not had any problems with MMS for over two weeks.  I switched from Textra back to the stock Android messaging app with no problems.  I'm currently using the stock app.

I'm increasingly thinking that my problems with MMS were due to TMo congestion issues involving Android devices.  My wife never experienced any problems with her iPhone.  I experienced the problem with both Textra and the Android app.  I did get a message from Textra that there were "no MMS connections available" once when the problem occurred. I deleted all but a couple text messages from my phone to no avail, so the problem is not caused by lack of available space for messages on my phone.  I disabled wifi calling and still had the problem.  I forced the texting app to use mobile data and that had no effect -- I still had the problem.

I did enable the developer option "mobile data always active" a couple weeks ago, about the time I stopped experiencing the problem, but I can't be sure that really had an impact; I mention it for completeness.

I'm not sure when the next "congestion event" might happen, but I'll be alert for the next time I have a failure to send/receive MMS and report it in a new thread.

I’m having the EXACT issues LawnMower described. It started a few days ago out of nowhere and now its 11/1/23.  The lack of group text is really difficult as we were in the process of coordinating funeral arrangements for a family member and I can’t communicate effectively. 

--

My problem disappeared for almost 8 months, but reappeared last week with a new wrinkle.  This time, I was able to send MMS messages but I couldn’t receive them.  Moreover, whereas I got a notification in my messaging app last time I had this problem, I got no notification this time.  I tried rebooting my phone to no avail.  Having no other choice, I decided to call T-Mobile support.

I spent a fair bit of time on the phone with a fairly knowledgeable rep, who took me through a series of steps to fix or at least diagnose the problem, but those steps failed.  He decided to open a ticket on my behalf with T-Mobile’s engineering group, and he agreed to get back to me within three business days with their findings.

(The phone started working correctly again later that day and it’s been working fine for over a week.)

Well, he never got back to me, so I called support again and asked them to look up the status of my ticket.  He looked up the ticket and told me the engineering team hadn’t done anything yet and forwarded me over to the engineering team.  At that point, I was talking to someone who knew what he was doing.  He told me they had made some changes on “their end” (not to my phone) that corrected the way it was connecting to T-Mo’s messaging infrastructure.  He didn’t tell me exactly what they did, but he did say that if the problem recurred, I’d need to go into a T-Mo store and either get a new phone or a new SIM card, referencing my ticket number.

I’d suggest that anyone with this problem contact T-Mo support and request that a ticket be opened, and then follow up on it until it gets resolved.  It seems like there is something wrong with the way T-Mo’s infrastructure is communicating with certain Android phones.  (This problem has never occurred on my wife’s iPhone.)  Mine is a OnePlus 10 Pro 5G, in case that matters.  (I’ll never have another OnePlus phone, but that’s a topic for another thread…)

Good luck getting this resolved!