The “blue-ticks” in a chat are probably the most hated of all technological inventions. You know what we are talking about — those little devils that appear the moment you open any chat app, be it Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger. In case of iMessages, it’s the “seen at” stamp.
Of course, on Messenger and on Whatsapp, you can turn off the “read” notification. But doing so will entail that you also don’t get to see if others have read your messages. Translation: If you don’t want others to know you are avoiding them, then you, too, have no way of knowing if they’re avoiding you!
But is there a way by which you can read the messages, not reply and still not look like a total jackass? Well, if you use the iPhones 6s or 6s Plus, then the answer is YES!
Note: This method works only for iMessages.
The latest iPhones both have this new 3D touch technology that’s really useful in many ways. It lets you “Peek” and “Pop”. You can peek at something, say an email or text message, without actually opening it with a light press on your screen. A harder press pops — or opens — the item.
So here’s what you do:
When you get a new iMessage, don’t press the notification. Instead, unlock the phone and open the app directly from the home screen. Then, gently press (or peek) on the conversation thread you want to see.
It should open a floater window with your conversation and a list of quick replies. You can read the messages here without triggering the “read receipts”. Make sure you don’t press harder because then it would “pop” out, and your conversation thread will open the normal way, marking all your messages “seen”.
Before you go all gaga over it, we would have you know that a similar feature is also available on the latest version of Android. From the lock screen, you can swipe down on any notification and it will show the message in its entirety.
Even this doesn’t trigger the blue ticks action. However, this feature in Android is restricted to just the 10 latest messages (in case of Whatsapp). So yeah, it is not completely foolproof, but it gets the job done.
Of course, the best method is to just simply disable read receipts altogether. Or better still, reply! Don’t ignore others. It’s not a very decent thing to do!
