How to turn off read receipts on your iPhone

Read receipts is an iMessage® feature that tells contacts when you’ve read their messages. If you’re looking for more privacy when sending and receiving messages, you may want to turn this feature off. This guide will walk you through the quick and easy process of how to turn off read receipts on your iPhone®.

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How read receipts affect your conversations

When read receipts are enabled, people who send you iMessages see the exact time you open their messages. Disabling this feature hides when you’ve read a message. If your contacts disable their read receipts, you won’t see when they read your messages, either. Keep in mind that read receipts only apply to iMessages—SMS texts never show read status.

Check your iOS version for compatibility

Every version of iOS® includes the read receipts feature. However, if you want to enable read receipts for some contacts and not others, you will need iOS 10 or later.

Luckily, the steps for adjusting your read receipt settings are the same across iPhones. Whether you want to know how to turn off read receipts on iPhone 16, 15, or 5, you can use the same approach.

Make sure your device is updated to the latest version of iOS to access all the iMessage options, including per-contact read receipts. Reach out to Asurion's tech help experts if you have any trouble.

Turn off read receipts globally for all contacts

One option is to disable read receipts for all the people you message. Turn read receipts off on iPhone completely with these steps:

1. Open Settings > Messages on your phone.
2. Turn off Send Read Receipts.

When the switch is grey, you know read receipts are disabled entirely. Now, all your iMessage contacts will see is a Delivered label after their messages are delivered to your phone.

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Turn off read receipts for individual conversations

If you have iOS 10 or later, you can also turn on or off read receipts for an individual contact with these steps:

1. Open the Messages app and tap the iMessage conversation you want to disable read receipts for.
2. Tap the contact’s name or profile icon at the top of the conversation.
3. Scroll down and turn off Send Read Receipts.

These new settings will only affect the specific conversation you selected. If you want to change settings in other specific conversations, you will have to go into each one individually and follow these steps again.

Difference between “Delivered” and “Read” indicators

After you send a message and it successfully reaches the recipient, you either see the label “Delivered” under your last sent message or “Read” with a time.

• The Read label means that the recipient has read receipts enabled and has opened your message.
• The Delivered label means that the person you contacted received the message. They may or may not have read it yet. If they don't have read receipts enabled, you will never see a “Read” label.

There’s a misconception that Focus Mode affects read receipts. However, read receipt settings don't change when someone enters or exits iPhone focus mode. Instead, if the person you’re messaging has Focus mode enabled, you’ll see a “Delivered Quietly” label under your most recent message once it’s delivered. That just means the recipient didn’t receive a notification because Focus was turned on.

If they have read receipts enabled, you will still see a read receipt once the person opens your message.

Troubleshooting if settings don’t appear

If you can’t find the read receipts menu, try these troubleshooting steps:

1. Check that iMessage is turned on by going to the Settings app and looking under Messages settings.
2. Restart your device or update to the latest version of iOS.
3. Verify that the contact is using iMessage. If so, your sent messages will appear as blue bubbles, and green bubbles if they are not.

FAQ

Do read receipts apply to texts or just iMessages?

Read receipts only apply to messages sent through iMessage. If you’re sending messages to someone with an Android phone or an iPhone user with iMessage off, there are no read receipts.

What happens when I turn off read receipts?

When you turn off read receipts, the people who send you messages can't see whether you have read them. All they will be able to see is whether their messages were delivered or not.

Will I still see when others read my messages?

Yes, if the people you send messages to still have read receipts enabled, you will be able to see when they read your messages. Adjusting your settings does not affect the read receipts for messages sent to you.