Irritated by the unwanted people sliding into your DMs but do not want to be upfront about it? Many times, we wish to read the messages of a person without letting them know. We desire to have a glimpse at what they said but do not want them to know that we are aware.
Or maybe we are just trying to avoid a person but are intrigued to read the message they sent us. To do this, you need to turn off read receipts on Instagram. But is that even possible? If yes, then how? Read on to know more.
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Can You Turn Off Read Receipts on Instagram?
Whatsapp has come with a feature for hiding read receipts to dodge unwanted texters. However, Instagram still has to go a long way to achieve that. Unfortunately, there is no such feature with which you can turn off read receipts on Instagram.
Whenever you read someone’s message, they are able to see “read” written below the message in a very small font. In fact, if they press and drag the message to the left side, they can even see the time it was delivered and read by you.
You can easily get caught red-handed on Instagram if you leave any message on seen in your chat! One official feature which can help you evade this problem is the recent disappearing messages feature of Instagram. With this feature, you can turn on the Vanish Mode, with which the chats get deleted as soon as the reader sees the message. It creates confusion as no one can have a copy or receipts of the messages.
However, when you apply this feature to a chat, the other person also comes to know about the Vanish mode. Thus, this feature is not completely discreet. So what to do to get past this issue?
Hideous Ways of Turning Off Read Receipts on Instagram
Upset that Instagram does not have a feature to turn off read receipts? Don’t worry; we got you covered! If you want to get your partner’s attention by ignoring them but still want to read every message there send, below are a few ways in which you can turn off read receipts in your Instagram chat.
Airplane Mode
When you turn on the airplane mode of your mobile, you go offline on Instagram. If you aim to read someone’s message without them getting the read receipt instantly, you can use this method.
- Simply open your Instagram account and go to the direct messages section.
- Then put your phone on airplane mode.
- You can also turn off the Wi-Fi and mobile data of your phone to be sure.
- After that, you can open the chat and read the message you wish to read.
- The other person will not get a read receipt for the same.
However, this is a temporary method. This works if you wish to hide the read receipt for some time. This may be useful when you want to show the other person that you are busy when in reality, you can’t wait to see the message. Or, you can do this to read the message of your friend or partner with whom you are currently in a fight and will sort it out later!
Disable Instagram Message Notifications
Sometimes, you are just using your phone when a message notification from Instagram pops up on your screen. You click on that by mistake, and the message gets a read receipt instantly. This is embarrassing and undesirable for people. To elude this problem, you must disable Instagram notifications, especially for DMs.
To do this-
- Open your Instagram account and go to Settings.
- Click on Notifications to open the page of notification settings.
- Search for Messages and Calls and click on them.
- You will see the option “Messages” and “Message requests.” press the toggle to turn off the notifications.
Consequently, you will stop receiving unwanted notifications from Instagram and stop accidentally opening them.
Restrict the Sender
If you want to block on Instagram, a particular sender, from sending you unwanted notifications, you can also restrict the sender. This ensures that you receive no such messages from them, which you do not want to open and read accidentally, giving them a read receipt. To do this,
- Open their profile and click on the three dots you see on the top right corner of their page.
- Click on that and select the option “Restrict.”
You will not receive any messages from them directly, but you can see the messages in the message requests folder. The best part about doing this is that you can see their messages, but they will not get a read receipt for the same. Also, you can un-restrict their account anytime in the future with the same process.
Disable Active Status
While you cannot turn off read receipts on Instagram, you surely can turn off your activity status. This will stop the other person from knowing when you are online. Consequently, you can use Instagram and respond to other people without them knowing that you are online. To do this, you should-
- Open the Profile option in your Instagram Settings.
- Click on Privacy, and then select Activity Status.
- Click on the toggle button in front of the Show Activity Status button and ensure that the toggle turns grey from blue.
Consequently, no one will ever come to know when you are online on Instagram. This will give you some extent of Privacy and secrecy.
Read From the Notification Panel
The last and the most common and easy way to read someone’s message is to read them from the notification panel. If you have the feature of Banner Notifications turned on for Instagram, you will receive notifications regarding any direct messages that you receive on Instagram.
If the messages are not too long, you can just read them from the notifications and then remove those notifications from the panel. This way, you can read the messages without them knowing.
Final Words
While we are still waiting for Instagram to come up with this much-needed feature of turning off the read receipts, we can avoid unwanted texts with the help of the tricks and tips mentioned above. However, if you prefer to chat without read receipts, you must resort to Whatsapp, which can help you hide your activity states as well as your read receipts!
