Send and receive pictures in SMS (MMS)

What it is

Omniscio can send and receive pictures in a text over the Pushbullet bridge (Omniscio mirrors your Android phone's texts through Pushbullet). Pictures ride on your real phone number — this is not a separate texting service like Twilio, so to the other person a picture looks exactly like one you sent or received yourself.

Pushbullet only. Pictures (MMS) work only on the Pushbullet provider. The native (self-hosted phone) provider is text-only for now — it can't send or receive pictures.

Where to find it

In the SMS panel — the New SMS box or a conversation's reply box — use the picture button, or paste an image straight into the message box.

How it behaves

Sending a picture

In the SMS panel — either New SMS (pencil) or inside a conversation's reply box:

1. Click the picture button (image icon) in the message bar and pick an image, or paste a screenshot directly into the message box (Ctrl+V).
2. A small thumbnail preview appears; remove it with the × if you change your mind. You can add a caption, or send the picture with no text at all.
3. Press Send. Omniscio shrinks the image to a carrier-friendly size, uploads it, and sends it attached to the text.

Works on desktop and mobile. (Scheduling a picture for later isn't supported — Send Later stays text-only for now.)

Receiving a picture

When someone texts you a picture, it shows up inline in the conversation, the same as a picture you sent — click it for a fullscreen view. If they send several pictures in one text, all of them appear as a small grid, and each one opens fullscreen on its own when tapped. Omniscio fetches the images from Pushbullet automatically in the background, so a picture-text may show its caption first and then fill in the pictures a moment later.

If a picture genuinely can't be fetched (a rare network hiccup, or the picture is old enough that Pushbullet no longer has it), the message falls back to a "📷 Photo — open on your phone" note. Omniscio also backfills received pictures already in your history — a few per sync so it never floods — so older picture-texts light up over the first little while too.

Heads-up for anyone who read the old version of this page: Omniscio used to say receiving pictures was impossible and needed a Twilio number. That was wrong — Pushbullet does hand Omniscio the image; Omniscio just wasn't reading it. It does now.

Cost / heads-up

Picture messages count against your Pushbullet texting allowance and may require Pushbullet Pro depending on your plan — worth a quick check before relying on it for volume. Receiving doesn't send anything, so it doesn't use the texting allowance; it just downloads the image Pushbullet already has.

For agents

Under the hood (for agents)

• Outbound flow: IPC SMS_SEND { phoneNumber, message, imageDataUrl? } → sendOperatorSms → sendSms → Pushbullet POST /v2/upload-request → multipart upload → POST /v2/texts with file_type inside data and file_url a sibling.
• Inbound flow: the thread-detail sync (syncThreadDetail) reads the image_urls array on an incoming type: "mms" message, fetches every allowed image in order (SSRF-guarded per image: https-only, Pushbullet/Backblaze hosts, size-capped, real-image-types only — see sms-mms-image.ts), and stores the ordered set on the row via updateMessageMediaList. Bounds: a per-message count cap + cumulative byte budget, plus a per-cycle IMAGE budget reserved whole-message-or-skip and a process attempt-guard, so a first-run history backfill never stampedes and a big batch can't bloat a row.
• Both directions store the picture(s) as bounded data: URLs on the message row — the full set as a JSON array in sms_messages.media_json (additive migration), with the legacy media_data_url / media_mime mirroring the first for back-compat; mirroring the contact-photo convention, not a media protocol handler.
• Renderer: SmsViewer reads the picture list through the smsMessageImages selector (normalized media, else the legacy single field) and renders one image exactly as before or a grid for two-plus, each with its own lightbox (direction-agnostic); the "open on your phone" placeholder shows only for an empty-body message with no stored picture.
• Full invariants + the security/shape decisions: .claude/memory/contracts/sms-mms-pictures-contract.md.

Related

Emoji and GIFs in SMS is the sibling capability in the same composer, and scheduling a text is the third control that sits beside them.