Apple's iMessage Notification Nuisance
Apple has been committing a grave injustice against us for years, and it's time someone speaks up and voices what the people have felt powerless to say. That brave person is me.
The problem is that iMessage reactions — such as someone liking a text with the thumbs-up emoji — keep playing in my AirPods. There should be a way to turn this off.
Here's the issue: if you receive an iMessage while wearing headphones, your phone will announce it: "From [name]: message here." That's incredibly useful! I find this feature fantastic. However, when I'm wearing my AirPods, I'm often not looking at my phone — I'm walking, doing chores, or at the gym. These are times when I want to know about new texts, like when my husband texts me about needing more eggs. Awesome! Let those notifications go! I love it!!!
But what I do not need to know is if someone reacted with a heart emoji to a message in a group chat.
Reactions in iMessage are great. They're efficient: a thumbs-up to acknowledge, or a heart for a baby photo, for instance. Apple, I salute you for this feature. But there's a catch: there's no way to turn off notifications for specific reactions. You can turn off all message announcements in your headphones, but then you'll miss important texts.
You can also select "time-sensitive and direct messages" only, but this doesn't solve the emoji reaction issue for me.
This problem is reminiscent of an old iMessage quirk: when someone wasn't using an iPhone, reactions came in as separate messages, causing chaos. Thankfully, Apple fixed this in 2024 by adopting Rich Communications Services.
John Ternus, if you want to make a significant impact as Apple CEO, here's a suggestion: add a toggle switch in the Notifications settings of the Messages app to turn off emoji reaction announcements.