Group text messages are incredibly useful for organizing family events or coordinating with coworkers. However, they can quickly become overwhelming. If you are stuck in a group chat with ten people who are all actively arguing about where to eat dinner, your iPhone will buzz relentlessly in your pocket for twenty minutes, interrupting your work or draining your battery.
You do not need to put your entire iPhone into “Do Not Disturb” mode (which would block important phone calls from your boss or your spouse) just to escape the group chat. Apple allows you to selectively mute individual text message conversations.
How to Hide Alerts for a Specific Conversation
You can silence a chat directly from the Messages app without leaving the conversation list.
- Open the Messages app on your iPhone.
- Look at your main list of text conversations and locate the specific chat that is bothering you. Do not open it.
- Place your finger on that conversation and swipe left.
- Two coloured boxes will appear on the right side of the chat: a red trash can (Delete) and a purple bell with a slash through it.
- Tap the purple bell icon.
Instantly, a small grey crescent moon icon will appear next to the time stamp on that conversation.
What Does “Hide Alerts” Actually Do?
When you hide alerts for a conversation, you are not blocking the people in the chat, and you are not leaving the group.
- The messages will still be delivered to your phone normally.
- You can still open the Messages app and read everything they are saying.
- However, your iPhone will not vibrate, it will not play a notification sound, and the messages will not pop up on your lock screen.
You are essentially telling your iPhone, “Accept these messages silently in the background, and I will read them whenever I am ready.”
How to Unmute the Conversation
Once the dinner plans are finalized and the group chat calms down, you can easily turn the notifications back on.
- Open the Messages app.
- Find the conversation with the grey crescent moon next to it.
- Swipe left on the conversation again.
- The purple bell icon will now appear without a slash through it. Tap the bell icon.
The crescent moon will disappear, and your phone will resume vibrating the next time someone sends a message to that group.