How To Block a Group in iMessage

Aaron Donald September 13, 2022

Group text messages have become a common tool for marketers and businesses to engage with what they believe is their target audience. Although this is a legitimate business practice, not all group texts are so innocent. Scammers also use this convenient way to contact groups of people in hopes of an easy payoff.

Fortunately, there are several things that you can do to end these situations. In this article, we’ll discuss what actions you can take to remove yourself from group texts and block those who send them.

Blocking a Group on Your iDevice

Leave the Group

If you’ve been added to an iMessage group, you can simply choose to leave. Once you leave an iMessage group, you’ll no longer receive notifications when group participants respond to it. To leave a group, follow these instructions:

Open the text message.
Tap the “People” icon on the top of the message that lists the group’s participants and scroll down to the bottom and select “Leave this Conversation.”

You’ve now been removed from the group text. You can delete the chat from your iPhone by swiping it to the left and tapping “Delete.”

Stop Notifications

There’s a difference between an iMessage and an SMS. An iMessage is one in which all group participants are using iPhones. You’ll know this if all of the responses within the group are the color blue. An SMS is one with a mix of participants using iPhones and other devices, and responses will be in green.

Unfortunately, there is no option to leave an SMS group text. An option for this type of unwanted group text is to silence your notifications. You’ll still be in the group, but you won’t have the annoyance of text alerts every time a participant responds. To learn how to do this, follow the steps below:

Launch your Messages app.
Swipe left on the group text.
Tap on the “Bell” icon.

Notifications for this group text will now be silenced.

Spam Filtering

Although this option doesn’t literally block unsolicited group text messages, it’s the next best thing. Your iPhone can filter text messages from unknown senders. If a person tries to send you a text message and they are not found in your list of contacts, you can choose to have these sent to a separate folder. You won’t receive any notification of receiving texts like these. To turn on Spam Filtering, do the following:

Tap on “Settings.”
Locate and select “Messages.”
Scroll down and find “Filter Unknown Senders” or “Unknown & Spam.”
Click on the toggle switch to turn it on.

You won’t be able to open any links in text messages that are filtered as spam until you either add the sender to your contact list or you respond to the text. It’s important to note that there could be times when you’ll want to be notified of a text from an unknown sender. An example of this would be a notification from your bank.

Block the Sender

Another option is to block the sender of the group text message. This will ensure that the sender of the text won’t be able to add you to a group text in the future. Although this sounds like the solution to this problem, it may not end unwanted text messages from this particular sender. Spammers rarely use the same phone number, but blocking their number is always an option. Follow these steps to stop receiving texts from a phone number:

Open the text message.
Click on the “People” icon located on the top of the screen.
Press on the person you want to block.
Scroll down and select “Block this Caller.”
Tap on “Block Contact” to confirm.

It’s usually easy to figure out who sent you the group text, as they typically will be the first text in the group. If you are unsure who the sender is, you can always block everyone in the group by following the method described above.

End Those Unsolicited Group Messages With a Few Taps

Unfortunately, you can’t block all incoming unsolicited group texts, but you do have some options to make them less annoying. Leaving the group is a good choice, or you can silence notifications. Blocking the sender is a great idea, but experienced spammers rarely use the same number.

Have you had the annoyance of unwanted group text messages? Did you use any of the solutions outlined in this article? Let us know in the comments section below.