One of the biggest reasons group chats are preferred on either Apple’s iMessage or RCS texting over Google Messages is the increased level of control both services allow. Whether you’re an iPhone owner and everyone in your group is texting from an Apple device, or you’re on team Android chatting with other Android users over RCS, your conversations have typing indicators, high-quality media sharing and, when you need your phone to buzz less, the ability to mute a conversation or outright leave it. Most importantly, iMessage and RCS group chats both offer end-to-end encryption, unless you’re in a thread with a mix of iPhone and Android phone owners.
Unfortunately, group texts with a mix of iPhone and Android participants include only bare-bones features. Those group texts are sent over MMS, a decades-old texting standard compatible with all phones and carriers, but it wasn’t built to include messaging features that we’ve become used to.
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In 2024, we could start to use MMS a lot less. Apple pledged to support the RCS standard later this year with iOS 18, and it will bring several enhancements when texting an iPhone and Android phones. The current iOS 18 beta already shows the iPhone supporting typing indicators and higher-quality media sharing when texting an Android phone, and those enhancements could make group texting a much better experience when the next operating system officially releases later this year. Until then, here are the steps to leave any conversation from your phone’s texting app, regardless of whether it’s happening on iMessage, RCS or as a mixed MMS chat.
Leaving group chats on an iPhone
You can leave group conversations on your iPhone in two ways. You can either mute a chat, which keeps you in a conversation but you no longer receive notifications about it, or you can outright leave and no longer have access to the chat.
The option to leave a conversation appears in iMessage chats with four or more participants.
On an iPhone, open Messages and go to the chat thread you want to leave. At the top of the screen are conversation controls, a group of icons with the participants. Tap this to open a pop-up menu. As long as your conversation has four or more participants, iOS gives you the ability to tap Leave this Conversation with red text. If your chat has three or fewer participants though, the option is grayed out, but you can tap Hide Alerts to prevent the conversation from notifying you further. Tapping Hide Alerts also allows you to mute a conversation, letting you keep access to a chat without necessarily leaving it.
Hide and block MMS chats on an iPhone
Although you can’t officially leave MMS group chats, you can hide or block the conversation. It’s not as good as outright leaving a conversation (other participants will still see you as in it), but you at least have no personal evidence of the conversation continuing.
On an iPhone, visit the group chat and tap the conversation controls. Instead of seeing Leave this conversation, you will see the option to Delete and Block this conversation. If you’d rather just mute the conversation instead of deleting and blocking it, you can hit Hide Alerts to mute it.
Instead of leaving a conversation, iOS offers the ability to delete and block an MMS group chat.
Leave group chats on an Android phone
On an Android phone using Google Messages, visit the chat thread you want to leave. Tap the conversation’s name to bring up the Group Details menu. At the bottom of the screen tap the Leave Group button. Unlike with iMessage, you can leave chats with as few as three participants.
The Leave Group button appears for RCS conversations with three or more participants.
If you want to just mute notifications, tap Notifications on the Group Details screen to bring up a window with notifications controls. This includes options to make the conversation stay Silent to prevent it from ringing your chat, and if you tap Lock Screen, a pop-up menu will give you the option to prevent notifications. Tap Don’t show notifications at all to enable.
Hide and block MMS chats on an Android phone
On an Android phone with Google Messages, follow the same steps to access options for controlling notifications. This includes visiting the MMS chat thread and then tapping either the name of the conversation or the names of the participants at the top to bring up the Group Details menu. You won’t see a Leave Group option like you did with an RCS thread, but you do get the same ability to tap Notifications to access controls for hiding the conversation. This includes the same options for turning the conversation to Silent and to select Don’t show notifications at all.
SMS vs. MMS vs. RCS
SMS stands for Short Message Service and debuted in 1992. Text messages are limited to 160 characters. MMS stands for Multimedia Messaging Service and supports sending photos, videos or other files and messages longer than 160 characters. MMS supports a group of people chatting in a single conversation thread, while SMS can text multiple people at once but is sent as individual messages to each person. RCS, which launched 15 years ago, is short for Rich Communication Services and can show typing indicators, read receipts and has end-to-end encryption.
While cross-platform chat apps like WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram have better controls for conversations, encryption and privacy, regardless of the type of phone participants are using, they don’t support SMS, MMS or RCS. That’s why the default messaging app on most phones is still widely used, even if it means that a group chat is on a less feature-filled, unsecured standard like MMS.
There is hope that in 2024 and beyond, there will be substantially fewer MMS conversations. While RCS texts will still be green on an iPhone, like SMS and MMS messages are now, just the fact that it has the capability of supporting more modern features for conversations between iPhones and Android phones could make a major difference in how we control what’s on our devices.
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