We’ve all been there. You receive a message from someone and don’t want them to know you’ve read it. It can be something completely innocent – like you don’t have time to reply straight away and don’t want them to think you’ve just looked at it and ignored it. Or you might genuinely have received a message from someone you like and don’t want them to know how eager you are.
But whether it be Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp, many of us have felt the ‘unread’ feature has saved us. The feature, available on most messaging servives, allows you to mark a conversation as unread to return later to. On your phone, it will appear as if you’ve just received the message, and it hasn’t been read yet.
But now many technology users are realising something horrifying – it’s only you it appears as unread for – not the sender. Having only just realised this revelantion, one “horrified” TikTok user shared it with others.
Presenter and comedian Eric Roberts took to the platform to share: “I just found out that when you mark a message as unread, it only marks it unread on your phone. Everyone else can still see that you’ve read that message. And I just want to apologise to everyone.” In the caption, he added: “I’m horified.”
And it turns out he wasn’t the only one who didn’t know. One person said: “You’re not serious are you? What about on Messenger? I need to trial this with a friend in the morning… I need to know!” Another simply said: “Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo.” “I am just finding this out now and I am not happy,” said another. Someone else wrote: “I’ve learnt that the hard way.”
But it turns out there’s a solution if you really don’t want people to know you’ve read their message. One person shared: “To everyone – turn off your read receipts! It’s the best thing I did this year. Knowing when someone has actually cast their eyes over a message is a level of info we just don’t need.” “Just turn off read receipts. Had them off for years,” added another.
One person tried it on an iPhone, and continued: “If read receipts are on, it doesn’t undo the read receipt, it just stays there, but for you, it’ll just show up as a conversation that you need to get back to.”
Regarding WhatsApp, another shared: “It only marks it unread for you, it doesn’t undo any read receipts. You need to turn off read receipts which will apply in future.”
To disable read receipts on iPhone for iMessage, go to Settings, Apps and Message. Then you can turn off Send Read Receipts. You can also do this on Android phone by tapping your profile in the Messages app, then go to Message Settings, RCS chats, and tap the switch.