SOMETIMES YOU JUST want to read a message without people seeing it, whether it’s because you don’t have time to reply straight away or want to leave it till later.

In the case of instant messaging, the majority of services out there allow you to turn off the read receipts  so you don’t see them (or blue ticks) when you look at a message. Of course, you don’t have to do this, but in case you need it, you can hide it for some of the more popular services.

iMessage

If you’ have an iPhone, then you’ve definitely used this at some point among your other iOS friends.

To turn it off, go into Settings > Messages  and you will see the option Send Read Receipts. Switch it off to prevent read receipts from appearing on your end.

WhatsApp

WhatsApp introduced a feature allowing you to turn off receipts recently and it’s easy to find. Go into Settings > Account > Privacy and you will see the read receipts option at the bottom.

Viber

Another easy one to find. Similar to WhatsApp, go into Settings > Privacy and you will see ‘Send Seen Status’.

Facebook Messenger

There’s no way to disable message receipts in the app itself (or the new web app that launched recently) but for the desktop version, you can install plugins like FBUnseen (Chrome and Firefox) or Unseenly (Chrome and Firefox) to prevent these notifications.

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