How To Show Messages On Iphone

You can turn off text message previews on your iPhone through your Notifications settings.
Customizing message preview settings can be helpful if you want to keep your messages private, even when they show up on your iPhone's lock screen.
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When a message appears on your iPhone — even when your phone is locked — the message preview can be a welcome feature.

However, a message preview can also be a privacy issue, depending on who's looking over your shoulder, or has eyes on an iPhone laying out in the open.

Fortunately, there's a middle ground: You can be alerted to the presence of a new message, without the contents of the message appearing on your screen.

Here are the four steps you need to disable Message previews through your Notification settings, meaning you'll still get the alert on your iPhone's lock screen — sans preview text.

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How to turn off message previews on your iPhone

1. Go into your iPhone and open the Settings app.

2. Tap "Notifications." You can use the Search bar at the top to find it as well.

Open the Notifications tab in the Settings app.

3. Under "Notification Style," scroll until you see the "Messages" tab. Tap it.

The default setting will show your message contents on the lock screen if notifications are enabled.

4. Under "Options" you'll see a setting for "Show Previews." Open the tab and select "Never" or "When Unlocked."

Rather than reveal what the message itself says, the "Never" setting will hide the message.

Now, when you receive a message, you'll still see a banner alerting you to the new message on your lock screen, but with no contents of the message included.

You'll still be able to see who the message is from.

But because any kind of alert can at times be an unwelcome intrusion onto your screen, while you're in your settings, you can also disable the notifications entirely.

To do this, after you tap "Messages" in the Notification Style list, simply tap the slider that reads "Allow Notifications."

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Emma Witman is an Asheville, NC-based freelance journalist with a keen interest in writing about hardware, PC gaming, politics, and personal finance. She is a former crime reporter for a daily newspaper, and has also written extensively about bartending for Insider. She may or may not judge your drink order when behind the bar. Follow her on Twitter at @emwity.