Yes, You Can Turn Off Read Receipts
“Read receipts” are those notifications that pop up under your iMessages that let you know when a message has been sent successfully and seen. It can be a nice feature to have, but it also drives some people crazy, depending on how they text and, well, who they’re texting.
If you’d rather people not know if you’ve seen their messages or not, there’s an easy way to shut them down.
- Head to the Messages app, and select a message thread.
- At the top of the chat window, select their name, then select the “i” button.
- You will see a number of useful options here, but you should look for the option that says Send Read Receipts. Make sure it’s turned off.
You can turn the receipts on or off on a contact-by-contact basis.