How to Turn Off Read Receipts on your iPhone

  Matt Cone       September 9, 2021      Tutorials iPhone


Your iPhone has the ability to show others when you read their text messages. This feature, known as read receipts, provides visual confirmation in the Messages app that you’ve read someone’s text message. The image below gives you a sense of what read receipts look like from the other person’s perspective.

Turn off read receipts on your iPhone

If you don’t want people to know when you’ve read a message, you can turn off the read receipts feature on your iPhone. Disabling the feature will keep other people in the dark about whether or not you’ve read their messages.

Here’s how to turn off read receipts for all contacts on your iPhone:

  1. From the home screen, tap Settings.

  2. Tap Messages, as shown below.

    Turn off read receipts on your iPhone

  3. Move the Send Read Receipts switch to the off position, as shown below.

    Turn off read receipts on your iPhone

That’s it — you’ve turned off read receipts for all contacts on your iPhone! From now on, your contacts won’t be able to see whether or not you’ve read their messages.

Turn Off Read Receipts for One Person

You might not want to disable read receipts for everybody. If that’s the case, you can turn off read receipts for one person. Here’s how to turn off read receipts for one person on your iPhone:

  1. From the home screen, tap Messages.

  2. Open the conversation with the person who you’d like to turn off read receipts.

  3. Tap the contact’s name at the top of the screen, and then tap Info, as shown below.

    Turn off read receipts on your iPhone

  4. Move the Send Read Receipts switch to the off position, as shown below.

    Turn off read receipts on your iPhone

You’ve turned off read receipts for a single contact on your iPhone! From now on, your contact won’t be able to see whether or not you’ve read their messages.

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