Have you ever read a text message, not replied to it, then received a follow up text message wondering why? The reason that the sender knows that you read the message was because you have read receipts turned on. But if you want to stop people from knowing that you read their iMessages, you can turn that feature off.
Disabling Read Receipts on an iPhone 5
Note that turning off read receipts on your iPhone is going to disable the feature for everyone that you communicate with through iMessage. It cannot be selectively left on or off for individual contacts.
Read receipts are only sent with iMessages. You can read more about the difference between regular SMS messages and iMessages here.
Step 1: Tap the Settings icon.
Step 2: Scroll down and select the Messages option.
Step 3: Tap the button to the right of Send Read Receipts to turn it off.
Do you need to know what time a text message was sent? Read here to learn how you can view the timestamps on any text message.
Matthew Burleigh has been writing tech tutorials since 2008. His writing has appeared on dozens of different websites and been read over 50 million times.
After receiving his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Computer Science he spent several years working in IT management for small businesses. However, he now works full time writing content online and creating websites.
His main writing topics include iPhones, Microsoft Office, Google Apps, Android, and Photoshop, but he has also written about many other tech topics as well.
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