Turn Off Deliver Quietly on iMessage

Having your iMessage notifications silenced can be a real pain, especially when they’re set to “Deliver Quietly.” In this mode, those alerts skip your lock screen, don’t make a peep with sounds, and won’t even show up as badges on the app icon, meaning you can easily miss them.

When “Deliver Quietly” is on, notifications go straight to your Notification Center without any immediate alerts. This can be handy for avoiding distractions, but it’s not great if it means missing important messages.

How to Disable ‘Deliver Quietly’ for iMessage

To make sure you always get your iMessage notifications right away, there are a couple of ways to turn off “Deliver Quietly,” using either the Notification Center or the Settings app. Here’s what you need to do:

Method 1: Using the Notification Center

This method is quicker if you have a recent ‘Deliver Quietly’ notification handy.

  1. Pull down from the top of your screen to open up the Notification Center, and find one of those sneaky iMessage notifications.
  2. Now, swipe left on the iMessage notification to see extra options pop up.
  3. Tap on “Manage,” and then select “Deliver Prominently.” This will bring back normal notification behavior for iMessage, allowing alerts to show up on your lock screen and make sounds.

Method 2: Through the Settings App

If you don’t have any recent iMessage notifications in the Notification Center, you can always adjust settings directly from the Settings app.

  1. Open the “Settings” app on your iPhone and tap on “Notifications.”
  2. Scroll down the list of apps and select “Messages.”
  3. Under the “Alerts” section, enable “Lock Screen” and “Banners” to make sure notifications appear when your phone is locked or in use.
  4. Tap “Sounds” and pick a notification tone (just make sure it’s not set to ‘None’) to enable audible alerts for your incoming messages.
  5. Go back to the previous screen and flip the switch for “Badges” to show the number of unread messages on the Messages app icon.

By changing these settings, your iMessage notifications will be back to normal, with sounds, lock screen alerts, and app icon badges, so you won’t miss anything important.

Quick Tip: If you want to quiet notifications from specific contacts or avoid junk, you can hide alerts for individual message threads. This way, you only mute the conversations you want, and keep getting alerts for important messages. Learn how to hide alerts for specific message threads.