Learn how to silence new text notifications for specific contacts or group chats in the Messages app on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac to reduce daily distractions.
Group conversations with multiple people can inundate you with notifications every time someone sends a message. This can be especially disruptive when you’re trying to focus on a specific task.
You can set specific iMessages or SMS texts on Do Not Disturb. They’ll still arrive, but you won’t be notified about them. And you can always open the chat thread to find them delivered there, as always.
Hide alerts for specific Messages conversations
- Open the Messages app on your iPhone or iPad.
- Swipe left across the chat thread you’d like to silence and tap the purple bell icon with a diagonal line across.
- You can also reveal this option by touching and holding the conversation or tapping your contact image at the top of the Messages conversation.
The same methods, and then some more, also work in the macOS version of Messages.
- Open Messages on Mac.
- Swipe left across the chat thread, then click the purple bell icon to silence all texts from that chat. A gray bell icon appears next to all muted chats in the Messages list.
You can also mute and unmute a chat:
- By pressing the Option + Command + M keys.
- Using the Hide Alerts option revealed by right-clicking the conversation.
- Selecting Conversation > Hide Alerts in the top menu bar.
- Clicking the profile icon (or info icon ⓘ next to the participant’s name) and turning on Hide Alerts.
To start receiving notifications for new messages in this thread again, repeat the steps above but choose the Show Alerts option or switch off Hide Alerts. This is a per-device setting so you’ll need to repeat this process on your other iPhones, iPads and Macs.
Muted messages won’t ring or vibrate your device, and the screen will not light up for new texts from that particular person or group. As mentioned, you’ll still be receiving messages, and the red badge number on the Messages app icon will still increase to indicate that you have unread texts.
On a related note: