Read receipts is a feature that enables a sender to know if a recipient has opened and read a sent text message.
It is both available on android and iPhone, more especially on instant messaging apps and services.
Talking about read receipts, we’ll be looking at one of the question that relates to read receipts and which is what happens if you turn off read receipts and then turn them back on.
You can easily turn off or turn on read receipts on your device, but the question being asked is what will happen.
This will be our main focus of the day.
Let’s proceed.
What happens if you turn off read receipts and then turn them back on?
If you turn off read receipts and then turn them back on after receiving and opening a message on your phone, the message will not trigger read receipts.
If you received a message on your phone, be it whatsapp messages or iMessages, if your read receipts is turned off upon receiving and reading the message, it won’t trigger read receipts even when you later enabled read receipts.
However, subsequent messages will trigger read receipts as you have enabled read receipts upon receiving and reading the messages.
Now kindly note that the way read receipts work on iMessage is quite different from other instant messaging apps like whatsapp, Facebook messenger, telegram, viber, etc.
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How read receipts work on whatsapp
On whatsapp, if you turn off read receipts on your whatsapp account, you have automatically turned off read receipts on all your whatsapp contacts.
This means that your contacts won’t be able to know if you have read their sent whatsapp messages or not.
It doesn’t end here as it also includes you.
Whenever you send a a message on whatsapp to any of your whatsapp friends or contacts, you won’t be able to see if they have opened and read your sent whatsapp messages.
This shows that read receipts on whatsapp works for both parties and this isn’t just for read receipts as it also applies to other whatsapp features like last seen, online status, etc.
Talking about what happens if you turn off read receipts and then turn them back on, on whatsapp, if you turn off read receipts and turn it on, it won’t trigger read receipts for all the previous whatsapp messages you received.
But, if you decides to leave your whatsapp read receipts on and active, subsequent whatsapp messages will trigger read receipts once you opened and read the messages.
This is how read receipts works on whatsapp messenger.
On iMessage
On iMessage, you can decide to turn off read receipts and it won’t affect you when sending iMessages to anyone on your iPhone or Apple device.
On iMessage, read receipts don’t work in both ways in the sense that if you turn off read receipts on your iMessage and someone send a message to you, it won’t trigger read receipts as the sender won’t see if you have read his or her sent message.
However, when you send a message to that very sender or anyone on your iPhone or Apple device, you will receive read receipts or see if the person has read your message as long as the recipient’s read receipts is enabled.
This is why how read receipts works on iMessage is different on whatsapp.
You will still receive read receipts whenever you send a message on iMessage as long as the recipient’s read is active whilst your own is turned off.
It doesn’t work that way on whatsapp as you must enable read receipts in order to receive read receipts whenever you send a message on whatsapp.
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Should you turn off read receipts?
You can turn off read receipts if you don’t fancy having your received messages triggering read receipts.
If you’re using iMessage, you can turn off read receipts as it won’t affect you though many a time it annoys a sender to see a sent message not triggering read receipts just because the recipient turned it off.
Some people do find it very much annoying and may decides not to send you more messages.
But on whatsapp, it will surely affect you as well.
All features on whatsapp work in both ways and this means that if you turn off read receipts on your whatsapp account, you have also turned turned off read receipts for all contacts in your whatsapp account.
This means that they won’t see if you have read their messages, and you won’t see if they have read your messages.
If you turn off last seen feature on whatsapp, your whatsapp contacts won’t see your last seen, and you won’t be able to see their last seen.
This also includes online status, status updates, etc on whatsapp messenger.
But generally, I don’t recommend turning off read receipts as it is very annoying unless you have a genuine reason to do so.
What happens if you turn on read receipts after you read a message
The message won’t trigger read receipts but subsequent messages received will trigger read receipts.
Talking about what happens if you turn off read receipts and then turn them back on, if you turn on read receipts after you must have opened and read a received message on your phone, it won’t trigger read receipts simply because read receipts was not active when you opened and read the message.
But if you leave your read receipts enabled, new messages you received will trigger read receipts once you opened them.
How to read a message without triggering read receipts
Instead of turning off read receipts, there is a way that you can read a message without triggering read receipts on the sender’s side.
I’m talking about reading a message in preview mode and this works for all instant messaging apps and services like iMessage, whatsapp, Skype, Facebook messenger, telegram, viber, etc.
Lets get started.
By Using Notification preview
This is my best method to read iMessages, sms text messages, whatsapp messages, etc without opening the message as long as it has a read receipt feature.
This works best on android phones though on iPhone you need to be very careful as to avoid opening the messages.
This method is simply the best because if someone send tons of messages to your phone, you will read all of them on the notification preview.
Mind you, viewing messages on notification preview doesn’t show read.
Getting Started on iPhone
If you received an iMessage or whatsapp messages on your iPhone and definitely it will show up on your notifications or notification preview, all you have to do is to pull down the notification bar and you will see the messages.
Now tap on the first notification and it will show all the notifications including the iMessages or whatsapp messages you received.
If there are tons of other notifications along with iMessage, you have to scroll down to read the iMessages you received on your iPhone.
Once you’re doing this, please be very careful as not to tap and open the received iMessages.
After you must have read the messages on your iPhone, clear all the notifications and you’re good to go.
This will not trigger read receipts and the sender will not know that you have read his sent messages.
On Android
This is a lot easier on android as you can easily pull down the notification to see all received notifications without opening the app.
This works best for all messaging app like the default Messages app, rcs chat message, whatsapp and Co.
If you received a message on your android phone or tablet, all you need to do is to pull down the notification bar and read all your received messages which will never trigger read receipts as long as you didn’t open the message.
Without opening the message, it you go ahead to reply the message, it will then trigger read receipts.
So the best ways to read messages without triggering read receipts is to read the messages in preview mode or you can go ahead and turn off read receipts.
Anr this bring the conclusion on today’s question of the day, what happens if you turn off read receipts and then turn them back on. Remember, If you turn off read receipts and then turn them back on after receiving a message on your phone, the message will not trigger read receipts.
