One of the biggest reasons why people prefer group chats on either Apple’s iMessage or RCS texting over Google Messages is the increased level of control both services give participants. 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 chatting 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. That’s because those group texts are sent over MMS, a decades-old texting standard that’s compatible with all phones and carriers, but wasn’t built to include messaging features that we’ve long 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 next year, which could mean that group texting between the iPhone and Android phones will improve with features such as muting, leaving a conversation and end-to-end encryption. But until then, here are the steps to leave any conversation from your phone’s native 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 have to receive notifications about it, or you can outright leave and no longer have access to the chat.
On an iPhone, open Messages and go to the chat thread you want to leave. At the top of the screen are conversation…
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