Turn Off Text Message Forwarding from the iPhone 5

Last updated on May 16th, 2023 at 11:04 am

The ability to send and receive iMessages from multiple devices has been available in iOS for several years. Apple finally made it possible, however, to send and receive text messages with the iOS 8 update.

But if you have enabled this option and found that you do not like it, then you might be looking for a way to turn it off. Our quick tutorial below will show you how to turn off text message forwarding from other devices from your iPhone 5.

For additional discussion on this topic for newer iPhone models, check out our forward text messages iPhone article.

Disable Text Message Forwarding for Other Devices from your iPhone

The steps in this article were performed on an iPhone 5, in iOS 8. Text message forwarding is not available in versions of iOS prior to iOS 8.

If you are receiving messages on another device, such as an iPad, then this is because of iMessage. You can read this article to learn how to disable this setting from your iPad.

To learn more about iMessage, you can visit Apple’s support site.

Step 1: Tap the Settings icon.

tap the settings icon

Step 2: Scroll down and select the Messages option.

select the messages option

Step 3: Select the Text Message Forwarding button.

tap the text message forwarding button

Step 4: Tap the button next to any options that appear on this screen. You will know that forwarding has been disabled for a device when there is not any green shading around the button. For example, text message forwarding has been disabled in the image below.

turn off text message forwarding for devices

You can read here to find out more about the difference between text messages and iMessages on your iPhone.

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