How to fix your iPhone on Google Fi if you aren’t able to send or receive images, videos, or links

I’ve done it! I’ve finally managed to get my fiancée to switch over from T-Mobile to Google Fi. After years of using the service, the company added support for iPhones, and I couldn’t be happier. So, after an evening of swapping everything over, we finished up and had a unified phone bill and features.

All was not well though, as she soon found that she was unable to send or receive images, videos, or even links on her iPhone through the Apple Messages app! Sadly, I wasn’t able to solve the problem, and we hadn’t had a chance to call Google up and ask for help until this point.

Luckily for us, and much to our surprise, she received the following message from Google without prompting, and it looks as though it’s reaching out directly to iPhone users on some level to resolve the issue, although at this time, I’m not certain of how widespread this is.

Truly, this isn’t a massive thing, but for us, it’s been a point of contention for switching to Fi, so today, I’m going to show you exactly how to do this for yourself. All you’ve got to do is visit the Google Fi help page and follow the steps seen below:

First, I’m going to assume that you’ve already tried troubleshooting the basics, such as enabling your cellular data and data roaming options. Next, go to your iPhone’s Settings app, tap “Cellular”, and then tap “Cellular Data Network”.

In the Personal hotspot APN field, type “h2g2-t”. Below that, you’ll see three more APN entry fields (one is for your cell data, the other is for your LTE setup and the last one is for your MMS, or picture messages!) Enter “h2g2” into all three of these.

There’s also an “MMSC” field, in which you’ll type out “https://m.fi.goog/mms/wapenc” without the quotations. In the case of my fiancée, all of this was already set up. However, this next part was set to a completely different number, and thus, resulted in an inability to send any images, videos, or URLs to Android users! In the box that says “MMS Max Message size”, type “23456789”. I know, simple, right? To anyone who isn’t exactly a networking expert or who didn’t think to Google “APN” settings – something that I had totally forgotten to try – this completely evaded me until Google reached out to her directly to offer the fix.

The last thing you’ll want to do is to restart your iPhone. After a moment or two, you’ll notice that not only can you send things, but anything that was sent to you during the period of time when you weren’t able to receive it will magically flood your Messages. It can be overwhelming at first, but give it a little bit of time to catch up to today’s date. You can now send that cat video you’ve been holding off on, so enjoy!

I just want the steps!

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone
2. Tap “Cellular”
3. Tap “Cellular Data Network”
4. Enter “h2g2-t” into the Personal hotspot APN field
5. Enter “h2g2” into the Cellular data, LTE Setup, and MMS fields
6. Enter “https://m.fi.goog/mms/wapenc” into the MMSC field
7. Enter “23456789” into the MMS Max Message size field
8. Restart your iPhone
9. Enjoy!