You Can Finally Turn Off Read Receipts in Facebook Messenger
Meta is adding new features to Facebook Messenger – and not to mention that they may have arrived too late. The service recently introduced end-to-end encryption by default for personal chats, and with the same update there’s finally an option to turn off read receipts. (You’ll no longer need to turn on airplane mode every time you want to view a message.) Plus, you’ll finally be able to edit your messages, too.
How to turn off read receipts in Facebook Messenger
Let’s get the basics out of the way first: being able to turn off read receipts is a huge win for your privacy. Now you can finally use the Messenger app to communicate with people without the added pressure of them knowing you saw their message, which can be an inconvenience or, in the case of online abuse, a real problem.
You can now turn off read receipts for individual chats or all of your contacts at once. This means the other person won’t know when you opened or read their message. On the other hand, when you disable this feature on your account, you will also not know when they read the message you sent. I think most of us can, however, bear the sacrifice of turning off read receipts for good.
To turn off read receipts for all contacts, go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Read Receipts and turn off Show read receipts . To turn off notifications for just a specific conversation, tap the contact’s name at the top of the conversation, go to the Read Receipts section , and turn off Show Read Receipts .
How to Edit Messages in Facebook Messenger
Messenger also took a page straight from the iPhone Messages and WhatsApp app; You can now edit any message within 15 minutes of sending it. You can edit a post as many times as you like within that 15-minute window, and the edit history isn’t shown, so no one can see what you changed.
This works both in the app and online. To edit in the app, touch and hold a message, then select the Edit button. On the web version, click the three dots next to the message you want to update and select Edit.
After you make changes, the message will show an ” Edited ” tag, but the other person won’t be able to see what was previously said. And note that Meta will store a copy of the message on its servers, so if someone uses it as a form of abuse, you’ll still have the tools to properly report it.