How-To

How to Turn Off Instagram Read Receipts

By Jeff Butts

Published March 11, 2024

Want to read a message on Instagram without alerting the sender? You can stop Instagram read receipts using this guide.

When you send a direct message to another user on Instagram, the social media network typically sends you a read receipt. When you open the app, you’ll be able to see a notification that they’ve read your message when you open up the conversation. Quite frankly, I often don’t want people to know exactly when I’ve read their DM, since I might want to take some time to reply. Fortunately, Meta has given Instagram users the option to turn off read receipts. Here’s how to do it.

How to Turn Off Read Receipts on Instagram

If you want to disable read receipts completely on Instagram, follow these steps.

1. From the Instagram app on your iPhone or Android device, tap your profile picture in the lower right corner.
   
2. Next, tap the three-line menu button in the top right corner.
   
3. Scroll down to Settings and activity, then choose Message and story replies.
   
4. Choose Show read receipts.
   
5. Toggle Read receipts off.
   

How to Turn Off Instagram Message Notifications

If you’d rather not turn off read receipts, but still want to have some control over when they’re sent, you just have to be careful about notifications. You see, when you get a message notification from Instagram nd tap it, the app immediately sends a read receipt. To avoid accidentally tapping message notifications, you can disable your Instagram message notifications using these steps.

1. Launch the Instagram app on your iPhone or Android device and tap your profile picture in the bottom right corner.
2. Select the three-line menu icon in the top-right corner of the screen.
3. In the Settings and activity menu, tap Notifications.
   
4. From the Notifications menu, select Messages.
5. Select Off beside Messages from individual and group chats.
6. Next, you should select Calls from the Notifications menu..
7. Finally, set Video Chats to Off if you don’t want notifications of incoming calls.
   

Stopping Instagram Read Receipts

Now that Instagram has implemented a proper way to turn off read receipts, we don’t need the workarounds we once used. To be sure we didn’t accidentally send a read receipt on Instagram we were forced to disable Wi-Fi and put our devices in Airplane mode. Or, we had to turn off notifications and hope for the best.