If you want a quick answer to this question, it’s “no, they don’t.” If you enable the Hide Alerts option in iMessage on your iPhone, the contact or group you are texting with won’t receive a notification about it. So you don’t have to worry about someone seeing that you want to take a break from communicating.
If you’ve enabled Hide Alerts in one of your iMessage groups, there is nothing supernatural. Sometimes it happens when you join conversations where many people chat simultaneously. In that case, your lock screen gets a million notifications you don’t want to see and hear.
However, you can always bring iMessage’s sounds and pop-up notifications back. So here’s how.
Can you find out if someone is hiding alerts in iMessage?
As mentioned above, there is currently no way to know if your contact has Hide Alerts enabled. However, there are ways to get information and make a guess.
Long response time to your messages
If the person you’re communicating with through the iMessage app hasn’t responded to your messages for a long time, it’s entirely possible that they simply don’t see them because they’ve turned on the Hide Alerts feature. Of course, there are also a lot of variables here, as he may be busy with something and just can’t respond.
Random time intervals between responses
If you’ve been chatting with a person and the time between their replies has increased, they may have turned on the Hide Alerts option. For example, you were texting for 2 minutes between responses, and then the time between their replies suddenly increased to 10 or 20 minutes.
While this could be considered a sign, sometimes people are just distracted and can’t respond right away. After all, there are plenty of other things besides online communication.
Ask about the Hide Alerts option
Another possible way to find out if the other person in your iMessage conversation is using the Hidden Alerts feature is to ask him directly. Maybe the person accidentally turned it on and didn’t know about it. In that case, you can tell them how to turn it off.
There are many reasons why they use the Hide Alerts option, but it doesn’t always mean anything negative, so don’t be afraid and ask them directly.
How to turn off Hide Alerts in iMessage on iPhone
Hide Alerts is a great alternative when you don’t want to turn off all notifications (for example, by using DND mode) in the Messages app. It completely hides alerts from the corresponding conversation – contact or group chat. They don’t appear on the lock screen or in the notification center. Furthermore, they have no sound.
However, if you want to receive notifications from specific contacts or groups again, you can turn off Hide Alerts. Just follow these steps:
- First, open Messages and go to the conversation you want to mute.
- Then tap on the chat photo at the top.
- After that, disable the Hide Alerts option.

- Finally, tap Done.
You can do the same thing more simply. Just go to the list of conversations and swipe one of them to the left. You will see two options: Delete (red) and Hide Alerts (blue). Tap on the blue option; you’ll no longer see a crossed-out bell next to that chat. This means that it is unmuted.

Now, you will receive notifications from the contacts and groups that you have unmuted.
Read Also:
- How to play Sea Battle in iMessage
- Does iMessage use data?
- Does deleting a message on iMessage unsend it?
Do your contacts know when you’re enabling DND mode?
Your iMessage contacts are only notified if you have enabled DND or another Focus Status on your iPhone. When sending a message, they will see a warning that says, “[contact’s name] has notifications silenced.”
In terms of privacy, the Hide Alerts option looks much better. It doesn’t tell anyone that you don’t want to see notifications, etc. For this reason, I often turn off notifications in certain iMessage groups and don’t worry that someone will find out about it.