How To Turn Off Read Receipts On A MacBook

ByKern Campbell, MBA

MacBooks can do many things. One of those things is that they can show your contacts when you have read their text messages. This is a function that gets referred to as ‘read receipts’. In your Messages app, it just confirms that you have read someone else’s text message to you. For example, it might say ‘Read Yesterday’ or that it was read at a particular time during the day. But you might not want other people knowing when – or if – you have read their text messages. Can you disable read receipts on your MacBook? And, if so, how do you do it? Is it really complicated? Are you able to turn this feature back on whenever you would like?

Turn Off Read Receipts On A MacBook 1 How To Turn Off Read Receipts On A MacBook

Table of Contents

How do you turn off read receipts on a MacBook?

You can disable read receipts on your MacBook whenever you’d like. Doing this will keep your contacts from knowing when (or if) you have read their messages. You can turn read receipts off for everyone or for just one person.

So, how do you do this? And can you do the same thing from your iPhone and iPad? Can you disable iMessage on your MacBook altogether? Read on to learn more.

How To Turn Off Read Receipts On MacBook

There are a few quick and easy steps for turning read receipts off on your MacBook. You can turn off your read receipts by doing the following:

  1. Open up your Messages application on your MacBook.
  2. In the Messages menu, choose where it says Preferences.
  3. Click on the iMessage tab.
  4. Un-check where it says Send read receipts.

Your read receipts are now turned off. And they are turned off for all of your contacts. They will no longer be able to tell whether you have read their messages.

Turn Read Receipts Off For Just One Contact

Would you like to turn read receipts off for just one of your contacts? If so, you can do that from your MacBook. This is pretty simple. In fact, all you need to do is:

  1. Go into your Messages app.
  2. Open up the conversation you have going with that particular contact.
  3. Find the information (‘i’) icon in the top right-hand corner of the screen and click on it.
  4. Deselect the checkbox that says Send read receipts.

You can repeat this individually for any other contacts you would like to disable read receipts for.

How To Turn Read Receipts Off On Your iPhone

Perhaps you would prefer to turn read receipts off on your iPhone, too. Again, the process is pretty simple as long as you know the steps to follow. These steps are as follows:

  1. From your home screen, tap on Settings.
  2. Tap on Messages.
  3. Slide the Send Read Receipts slider to the ‘off’ position.

To do it for just one person, you need to:

  1. Go into your Messages.
  2. Open the text message exchanges with the person you do not want to get your read receipts.
  3. Tap on that contact’s name, then select info.
  4. Switch Send Read Receipts to the ‘off’ position.

Remember, you can go back in and switch Send Read Receipts back on any time that you would like.

Turn Off Read Receipts On A MacBook 1 1 How To Turn Off Read Receipts On A MacBook

How To Turn Read Receipts Off On Your iPad

If you would like to turn read receipts off from your iPad, you will be able to do so. You basically do it the same way described in the section above for iPhones.

How To Disable iMessage On Your MacBook

Let’s say that you just want to disable iMessages entirely. Can you do so from your MacBook? This end-to-end encrypted messaging system can be disabled if you just do not wish to use it.

You can disable it by:

  1. Open up the Messages application on your MacBook.
  2. Go into the Messages menu, then choose Preferences. 
  3. Deselect where it says ‘Enable Messages in iCloud’ (where there is a checkbox), then click on the Sign Out button.

This disables iMessage on your MacBook. To re-enable it, you will need to sign in to iCloud from the Messages app, then select the checkbox that says Enable Messages in iCloud.

What To Do If Read Receipts Is Not Working On Your MacBook

There is a software glitch that can cause read receipts to not work properly on your MacBook. Some people have found that, even when they disabled read receipts on their devices, their contacts were still seeing when these people had read their messages. 

This seems to have been linked to the release of iOS 15 and prior iterations, so it might not affect devices that are running iOS 16 or later. 

For some people, the resolution has come in the form of simply restarting their MacBook or other Apple device.

It is at least a temporary workaround. Just be sure to check the toggle bar for this function to ensure that it is off. Rebooting the device could switch the toggle back to the off position, which is where it should stay until you tell it to do otherwise.

You could try updating your MacBook to the most current operating system to see if that helps eliminate the issue.

The actual cause of this issue has yet to be uncovered, so it is still something of a mystery to us Apple users.

Apple makes it easy to turn off your read receipts from your MacBook or any other Apple device that you own. The process is fairly streamlined, and you can choose to do this for all of your contacts or just one. 

Any time you wish to undo this action, it just takes the toggle of a switch to enable your read receipts once more. While you could potentially encounter some difficulties if your software is subject to the infamous glitch, you should otherwise have an easy go of it with toggling the read receipts function off (and back on) on your MacBook.

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