When generating with Midjourney, the most maddening thing isn’t “the image doesn’t look good,” but having your prompt blocked, jobs stuck in the queue, or being unable to reproduce results with the same parameters. Below, I break down several of Midjourney’s most common—and most easily overlooked—issues, and provide troubleshooting steps you can follow directly.
Prompt blocked: Why the same sentence won’t go through
Midjourney performs content safety moderation. When you see “blocked/violates rules,” it’s usually not a system failure, but that you’ve triggered a sensitive word or a high-risk description. The fix is to delete or rewrite descriptions involving personal identity, violence/gore, minors, explicit body parts, etc. into more neutral wording, then add the text back section by section to confirm which part is triggering it.
If you’re making realistic portraits, Midjourney is also stricter about “real celebrities/identifiable people.” It’s recommended to use phrasing like “generic portrait / fictional character,” and reduce direct references such as “same as [celebrity].” In Midjourney, rephrasing the same concept often makes it pass.
Jobs stuck in queue or taking a long time: First tell whether it’s you or the server
If Midjourney shows a long queue, first check the official status page to see whether there’s maintenance or congestion (status.midjourney.com). If the status is normal but you’re still stuck, try re-sending /imagine in Discord, or switch to another official channel / DM the bot and try again, to avoid delays caused by a single channel.
Also check whether you’ve switched to a slower mode (e.g., the Relax queue is slower), and whether you submitted too many jobs in a short time and are now waiting. When Midjourney is congested, simpler prompts often enter the queue faster; for long complex prompts, you can split the process into two generations and then iterate.
