Hide Alerts on iPhone: What It Is & How to Enable It

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Know what happens when you hide alerts

Co-authored by Rain Kengly Reviewed by Luigi Oppido

Last Updated: March 16, 2025 Fact Checked

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What does Hide Alerts mean?

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Can someone tell I hid their alerts?

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Hiding Alerts in Messages

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Troubleshooting

With the "Hide Alerts" feature, you can mute notifications for a single conversation in iMessage. You'll no longer hear sound alerts when someone replies to the message or see notifications for that conversation on your Lock Screen. Luckily, no one will know if you decide to hide alerts from them! Here's what Hide Alerts means on iPhone and how to enable or disable it.

Hide Alerts on iMessage Meaning

When you hide alerts for a conversation, you won't get any sound alerts or push notifications on your lock screen. However, you'll still see the red circle indicator on the corner of the Messages app and the blue unread circle within the app.

Section 1 of 4:

What does Hide Alerts mean on an iPhone?

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Hide Alerts allows you to silence notifications from someone in Messages. This applies to single conversations and group conversations. When you toggle on the Hide Alerts option, you'll still receive the messages, but you won't be alerted with a sound, push notification, or banner.^{[1]
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- When a conversation has Hide Alerts on, you can still see the red indicator on the Messages app icon and the blue circle next to the conversation; this tells you that you have unread messages.
- The user won't be notified that you have their conversation muted.
- Hide Alerts can really come in handy for busy group chats when you don't want to be notified of every new message.

Section 2 of 4:

Can someone tell I hid their alerts?

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No one will know you have Hide Alerts on. This feature can be turned on and off whenever you'd like; only you will know if you have the feature enabled.
- A user would only be able to see that you have notifications silenced if you're actively in Focus Mode (like Do Not Disturb or Sleep mode) and you have Focus Status sharing enabled. Then, users would see "Notification Silenced" in the conversation. However, this will go away once you exit Focus Mode or disable Focus Status sharing.

Section 3 of 4:

How to Hide Alerts for a Conversation

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This is the white speech bubble with a green bubble.
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Swipe towards the left on a conversation. This will open more settings for that conversation.
- You can hide alerts for a single-person chat or for a group chat.
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Tap the bell icon with a slash. Hide Alerts is now enabled for the selected conversation. You should see the bell icon with a slash on the right side of the conversation underneath the time/date.
- To disable Hide Alerts for a conversation, swipe left on the conversation, then tap the bell icon.
- If you're having trouble swiping left, tap the conversation. Tap the user's icon at the top, and then toggle on Hide Alerts. Tap Done.

Section 4 of 4:

Troubleshooting

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If you can't get Hide Alerts to work properly, give your device a complete restart.
If you don't see the option to hide alerts or you're unable to disable the feature, try closing the Messages app completely and then reopening it.
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Check iCloud sync for the Messages. Some users report that Hide Alerts has been turning on by itself. This could be due to your iCloud settings, which may sync your iMessage settings across each device. If you use the Messages app on your iPhone, iPad, and/or Mac, check the app on each device and make sure the Hide Alerts feature status is reflected correctly.
- To see if iMessage is synced to iCloud, open the Settings app, tap your name, then tap iCloud. Tap Messages in iCloud to see if syncing is on or off. If syncing is enabled and you've enabled Hide Alerts on one device, it will automatically enable on a different device.^{[2]
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