Hi all,

I've had a Google Pixel 8 Pro (bought new and unlocked from Best Buy) for a few months now and I'm mostly getting used to it but there are a few things I still haven't figured out. One of those is my total inability to send SMS/MMS messages to certain people. This issue has gone through a few iterations but seems to have gotten worse just recently, and I didn't change anything at all except regular OS updates. Initially, using the stock messenger app, my texts would mostly be sent, but I had trouble replying to group chats. Some chats would let me respond, others would not. My messages would just be stuck in a never ending "Sending..." status to those particular group chats, but they would never actually send. Eventually that began to include seemingly random contacts. Some people get my messages just fine, others my message wouldn't send, it would just get stuck in that loop. Then, the "Sending..." message started to go away and was replaced with "Not Sent. Tap to try again." At this point it was still only some contacts that I couldn't text, but it seemed to begin to encompass all MMS/group chats. Also I couldn't send image files to many people, same message.

A few days ago, the problem changed. Now when I try to text some people, (and that group now includes some people I could text before but can't anymore) I get the "Not sent. Tap to try again." message three or four times in rapid succession and I have no way to send anything to those people unless I want to use Facebook Messenger.

I tried some other apps, Handcent and Chomp, neither one made any difference at all. Same failures, like the phone itself is getting in the way and saying "absolutely not, you can not send anything to that number." I thought the number might be a problem, so I selected one of the contacts and edited their information to ensure there was only one number available and it didn't have a +1 in front of it or anything. Same exact result. Nothing seems to be working.

Again, I can receive SMS/MMS messages. That's a little buggy too, but I do receive them all (as far as I know). I can also text some people with no trouble, but not others. Some of the people I can't text have Androids, some have iPhones. I have tried three different apps, setting each to the "default messenger app" and ensuring the apps had all the permissions they requested. Nothing.

Unfortunately I'm not the world's most tech savvy guy, so beyond the handful of basic changes I knew to try I'm out of ideas. Most information I find in a Google search is about not receiving texts, or them all going out at once. Neither of those seem to be my problem.

My business is paralyzed. Please help!

Okay as of a few minutes ago I can no longer send text messages to anyone, including people whom I had been successfully texting less than an hour ago. What could be happening?

This sounds a lot like a carrier problem. Can you confirm whether or not this problem still occurs if you put your sim card into a different phone?

I restarted the phone (not for the first time) and now it seems to be working. The only thing I did differently this time was send a text message from my admin profile before switching to my other profiles. Due to the evolving nature of the problem, I am not convinced that was a permanent fix or that I won't see the problem again. I honestly don't know enough about this stuff to rule out carrier problems, but my thinking was that it might have something to do with different security settings on different profiles?

    FetalNevada it's already pretty well known that sending SMS from user profiles other than "owner" is pretty buggy. Afaik the GOS team is trying to fix that, but you'd need to track down the according Github issues. Sending from owner shouldn't be problematic, so maybe try that as a workaround for now.

    Do you know what happens with incoming text messages when using profiles other than "owner"?

    I'm just curious. I'm a new user, I just installed Graphene yesterday. I plan to experiment with the OS on the new phone for a few days before moving the sim card over and using it full time.

    I'm considering using a dedicated user profile to run apps that I consider less trustworthy. For the most part, I'd do what I need to do in the alternate profile, then get out quickly. But - if I spend significant time in another profile, will that affect incoming SMS? If I receive an incoming SMS, will it be stored in the message history for the alternate profile, and thus inaccessible from the main profile?

      This happens to me, Pixel 6a, its so damn annoying.

      It only happens with image attachments but its very disruptive. This is a huge issue that popped up from the Android 15 update.

      If anyone could help :<

      raccoondad yeah, but it's buggy as I said. MMS seems to be almost completely broken. This seems to stem from the ancient (and somewhat unsupported) version of the AOSP SMS app.

        raccoondad this will inevitably happen as there has been almost no updates to the AOSP app. It's not the only app that is causing some head scratches for the GOS team apparently, Gallery is also on the list, Keyboard as well. Maybe a few others I haven't heard about.

        splattergames Thanks for the quick reply.

        With your setup, will your phone appear as if it were offline to your carrier if they were trying to deliver an incoming SMS, but were in a different profile?

        I'm curious why you disallowed SMS in secondary profiles (but impressed that you can do that). Every decision involves trade offs. My mission at the moment is to understand the trade offs before I start trading them!

          MrDavis_Machine for the first part, I have no idea. The owner is always active and kind of a "root lite" since some apps expect to run in the owner profile, so SMS always arrive from what I observed. I run on my owner profile mainly (all FOSS apps, nothing proprietary running except GCam and GPhotos without network access) and my secondary user is stuffed with spyware apps I regularly use. I honestly have no idea which benefits it would bring me to run mainly in a separate user profile.

            splattergames Thanks. The setup which you describe is basically what I'm hoping to achieve.

            I was thinking about installing Facebook in a separate profile. I rarely use this other than for marketplace, to buy and sell items. I normally just avoid this on my phone altogether - I have a dedicated PC for insecure apps, on a separate network. I have a bunch of items to sell at the moment, so the ability to be responsive while on the road would be helpful.

            I'm also thinking about installing Google Maps in a different profile. It just occurred to me today that if I were using that to navigate for a long drive, and then my SMS messages were blocked for a few hours, that would be a problem. As the long as the messages are received and stored, no problem - I'm not going to respond while driving anyway.

            Did you disallow SMS in your secondary profile in order to prevent accidental SMS use from the wrong profile?

              MrDavis_Machine since I only have invasive apps in my non-owner profiles, I like to keep these apps separate from all important data. I have spread my stuff around a secondary user, a work profile and private space. This has the great benefit of not only separation; but I can also put these to sleep whenever I want. So basically:

              • often used apps (Google Maps, Apple Music, banking) are in the work profile which also has Play Services running.
              • not as often used apps but those that require some convenience are in private space (my carrier apps, speedtest, etc.), but Private Space has no Play Services at all.
              • secondary user: not so often used apps that don't require convenience. Mostly for managing smart home stuff and shopping apps. Play Services installed for compatibility but all permissions denied.

              Make of that what you will, but it suits my needs very well. Most of the time, I have only a small subset of invasive apps running, which is perfect for my threat model.

              splattergames Regular apps in the Owner user do not have any additional privileges or access compared to apps elsewhere. That's only something relevant to OS components like the Settings app.

              GrapheneOS okay, maybe I was under a false impression. How does the Stock Pixel OS handle that? Or is it the same mess for them too with user profiles?

              Regarding the "root lite" I'm talking about: I don't mean extra permissions, more like that there's a high chance that there won't be random bugs with things like Android Auto or SMS or setting special permissions for apps in the owner profile as it happens in Private Space or user profiles.