How to Silence Notifications for a Busy Group Chat

When a group chat gets going, your phone can buzz, ping, and light up dozens of times an hour. That is wonderful when you want to follow along in real time. But it can be exhausting during dinner, a doctor's appointment, or a quiet evening of reading. The good news is that you do not have to leave a group chat to get peace and quiet. Both iPhone and Android phones offer a way to mute, or silence, a single conversation. The chat keeps going, your messages still arrive. And you can read them whenever you choose. The only thing that changes is that your phone stops making noise or showing pop-up alerts for that one chat. This is sometimes called "Hide Alerts" on iPhone or "Notifications off" on Android. You can turn it on for a few hours, until tomorrow morning, or forever, depending on how the chat is going. You can also turn it back on with the same few taps if you decide you want to hear from the group again. Muting a chat is private. The other people in the group are not told that you have silenced their messages. So there are no hurt feelings. It is a simple, respectful way to take care of your own attention without leaving anyone out. This works for group texts, but the same idea also applies to noisy chats in other apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Signal, which all have a similar mute option in the chat's settings. The steps below cover the two most common cases: the Messages app on iPhone and Google Messages on Android.