All of us carry round a number of non-public and delicate materials on our smartphones. That features textual content messages—and there is likely to be instances once you’d fairly sure messages weren’t out there for public viewing, even if you happen to nonetheless wish to save your textual content messages.
You’ll have a strong lock display screen mechanism in place, however there’s all the time the possibility another person may get entry to your telephone, otherwise you would possibly voluntarily lend it to a buddy or relative. Regardless of the case, you don’t need another person scrolling by your texts, and right here we’ll focus particularly on the best way to disguise textual content messages on an iPhone.
Another excuse for hiding textual content messages on an iPhone with out deleting them is likely to be merely to scale back litter: Possibly you don’t wish to must sift by a load of messages to seek out the essential ones.
Regardless of the reasoning, that is a kind of iPhone message tips that lots of people are eager to know the best way to do. The method it is advisable to take to cover messages on an iPhone depends upon the apps you’re utilizing most frequently, and the way precisely you wish to disguise particular textual content messages in your iPhone. It’s additionally value making an allowance for that these texts can present up elsewhere the place your Apple ID is linked—like iCloud, or your iPad or Apple Watch—so that you would possibly wish to disguise them right here too.
Conceal textual content messages on the iPhone lock display screen
Relying in your iPhone settings, textual content messages and messages from different apps would possibly present up in your lock display screen—not preferrred if you happen to get an incoming message that you simply’d fairly preserve non-public, and somebody is trying over your shoulder, or your telephone is face up on a desk when different persons are round.
To cease this from taking place, head to Settings in iOS, and faucet Notifications then Messages. Select Present Previews and alter this to When Unlocked (Default) to cease the previews from displaying up on the lock display screen, or By no means to cease them displaying up wherever—so that you’ll have to enter the Messages app to learn them.
You’ll discover the identical Present Previews settings in your different messaging apps, from WhatsApp to Google Chat. The opposite possibility, which you will discover on the identical screens, is to show off notifications for these messaging apps altogether.
Conceal textual content messages in iPhone apps
If your iMessage ideas then you definately’ll know that each commonplace SMS textual content messages and messages utilizing Apple’s iMessage platform seem within the Messages app in your iPhone. Nevertheless, there’s presently no strategy to disguise messages from the principle All Messages listing, which reveals incoming messages in reverse chronological order.
Your solely choices, which you’ll be able to see by lengthy urgent on a dialog, are to delete the message thread fully, or disguise alerts for it—both of these choices might match what you’re desirous to do, however relating to the query of are you able to disguise messages on an iPhone, it’s a no for the principle Messages app.
You do have the choice to dam contacts, which implies their messages won’t ever be delivered to your inbox in Messages (they received’t learn about it): It’s an excessive means of hiding texts, but it surely works. In any Messages dialog, faucet the title or quantity on the high, then the data button (the small particular person icon) and Block this Caller. You possibly can see blocked contacts from Messages > Blocked Contacts in Settings.
Different apps work otherwise although. In WhatsApp, for instance, you possibly can lengthy press on a dialog thread (both a one-to-one chat or a bunch chat), after which select Archive to dismiss the chat from the principle inbox. Archived chats don’t immediate notifications until you’re particularly talked about or replied to, and you may get at your archived conversations by tapping Archived on the high of the Chats window.
Faucet Settings after which Chats, and also you’ll discover the choice to archive all of your chats without delay, leaving you with a clear inbox. There’s additionally a Preserve Chats Archived toggle swap—that is enabled by default, however if you happen to disable it, archived chats will pop again into the principle messages listing at any time when there’s a brand new message.
WhatsApp helps you to lock chats too—that is like archiving chats, however lock chats can solely be seen with the passcode on your iPhone, or through Face ID or Contact ID. To lock a dialog, faucet on the bar on the high of the chat, then select Lock Chat. To get to those hidden messages, it is advisable to faucet Locked Chats on the high of the dialog listing.
Fb Messenger for iOS has an archive function too, and once more you get to it by lengthy urgent on a message then selecting the Archive possibility that pops up. Faucet the menu button (the three horizontal strains, high left), to seek out the Archive folder: Head into the folder to learn archived messages and restore them to the principle chat listing.
Secret textual content conversations in your iPhone
One other method you possibly can take to hiding textual content messages on an iPhone is to ship chats that vanish as soon as they’ve been learn, or after a selected time frame. That is one thing WhatsApp can do, for instance: Faucet the bar on the high of a one-to-one or group chat, then decide Disappearing Messages to set the choices.
You may additionally have heard of the invisible ink iPhone trick, which works within the default iOS Messages app. Whenever you’re about to ship a chat over iMessage, lengthy press on the blue ship button, then decide the invisible ink possibility earlier than sending it—it means the message received’t be seen to the recipient(s) till it’s tapped on. It’s one other means of hiding textual content messages on the iPhone.
It’s value spending a little bit little bit of time to see what the choices are inside your messaging app of selection relating to hiding messages, or a minimum of muting their notifications. It’s not potential to cover textual content messages on each chat app on the iPhone, however many of those apps do have a couple of associated choices you possibly can mess around with.