Quick show of hands: How many of you have found yourself stuck in a multi-person iMessage session that caused your phone to “buzz” every five seconds?
Yeah. We’ve all been there. It used to be that to escape the constant buzzing, you had to enable iOS system-wide Do Not Disturb or turn off all notifications in the Messages app. Now it’s pretty easy to just leave the group chat or silence it.
Steps to Leave iMessage Group Chat on iPhone
- Open the Messages app.
- Tap the group conversation you want to leave.
- Tap the group name at the top of the conversation.
- Scroll down and tap Leave this conversationneither Delete and block this conversation.
Blocked conversations are moved to the Recently deleted folder, where you can recover them.
Silencing a group chat without leaving it
On the same screen, you will see an option to hide alerts. Simply turn this off if you want to stay in the conversation but no longer want to receive notifications.
You can also mute a Messages thread from the main Messages screen (group text or not):
- Open the Messages app.
- Locate the conversation you want to silence and swipe left… but not too far or you’ll delete it.
- Tap the bell icon to silence this message thread.
