Hide Alerts in Messages
If you’re feeling a little bombarded by your friends or family, you can mute their messages. Simply find the thread in Messages, swipe left, and select Hide Alerts. Do the same action again to turn them back on.
One other thing you can do is turn on/off Read Receipts for individual contacts. While in a thread, tap the Contact photo at the top of the display and select the blue info button. Here you’ll see a toggle to enable or disable Read Receipts. You can also see a map of contacts that share their location and tap attachments to scroll through all media within a thread.