Google confirms Allo's 'Always download media' feature is broken

Recently we stumbled upon a thread on Google Allo help forum, where a user brought it to light that the option to automatically download media content (photos/vidoes) – ‘Always download media‘ – wasn’t working for them. Soon after the matter was reported, it got officially acknowledged by Google.

As clear from its name, the option in question allows auto-downloads of photos and videos shared with you by others on Google’s AI-assisted messaging app. Sadly, it’s not working as intended.

Following are some of the user shared screenshots, which clearly reveal that despite enabling the required option (left), the media wasn’t auto-downloading (right) for the user.

What’s worse is – according to the user who reported the issue on Google forums – even manual downloading of media fails to work in this case. Meaning, if they even tap the download icon on the photo/video, nothing happens.

Google employee Chris (who is also the Community Manager at the official Allo help forum) acknowledged the problem, and also informed the affected user that the concerned team was able to reproduce the same, although with a different error code. Here’s what he said:

Just heard back from eng and they’re stumped — they’ve been able a similar issue but with 503 errors vs. the 403s your report

Though the error codes are different, what’s relieving is that at least the problem has been reproduced at the company’s end. Google is now asking the user to share logs (or send feedback) for debugging the issue. We hope the company will catch hold of the actual cause and fix it sooner than later.

Google Allo Help Forum

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