Group chats using RCS messaging or Apple’s iMessage are popular because of the higher degree of control and security they provide compared to Google Messages. Whether you own an iPhone and everyone in your group is texting from an Apple device, or you’re on team Android and chatting with other Android users over RCS, your conversations have features like typing indicators, high-quality media sharing, and the option to mute or stop a conversation when you want your phone to buzz less. Unless you’re in a thread with a mix of iPhone and Android phone owners, iMessage and RCS group chats on Google Messages offer end-to-end encryption.
Additionally, group conversations with a mix of iPhone and Android users have more capabilities than ever before thanks to iOS 18’s RCS compatibility, but they aren’t as good as when a conversation is conducted entirely on iMessage or Google Messages. Typing indicators, better-quality media, and simpler group chats are now possible in “green bubble chats” between an iPhone and an Android phone.
Encryption is now absent from RCS chats between iPhones and Android phones, but it should be included in a future release. With any luck, this will provide these discussions with the same degree of anonymity that we anticipate from messaging apps like iMessage, WhatsApp, or Signal.
Group chats rely on MMS, a decades-old texting protocol that works with all phones and carriers, for discussions that don’t use iMessage or RCS. But it wasn’t designed with the messaging capabilities we’re accustomed to.
You can exit a group chat with other people no matter how you’re feeling. Regardless of whether the conversation is taking place on iMessage, RCS, or as a mixed MMS chat, follow these instructions to end it from the texting app on your phone.
Using an iPhone to exit group chats
There are two ways to exit group discussions on your iPhone. You have two options: either leave the chat and no longer have access to it, or mute it, which keeps you in the conversation but stops you from getting notifications about it.
On an iPhone, navigate to the chat thread you wish to exit by opening Messages. Conversation controls, a collection of participant icons, are located at the top of the screen. To bring up a pop-up menu, tap this. iOS allows you to touch Leave this Conversation with red writing if there are four or more people in your conversation. The option is grayed out if there are three or fewer people in the chat, but you can tap Hide Alerts to stop the conversation from alerting you further. You can mute a conversation by tapping Hide Alerts, which keeps you in the chat without requiring you to exit it. These procedures are applicable to both RCS and iMessage chats.
iPhone MMS chats can be hidden and blocked
MMS group chats are not formally exitable, however you can choose to hide or block the conversation. At least you don’t have any direct proof that the chat is still going on, but it’s still not as good as simply ending it (other participants will still view you as part of it).
To access the conversation controls on an iPhone, navigate to the group chat. You will have the option to Delete and Block this communication instead of Leave this conversation. Instead of erasing and censoring the chat, you can choose to simply mute it by selecting Hide Alerts.
On an Android phone, exit group chats
Go to the chat thread you wish to exit on an Android phone using Google Messages. To access the Group Details option, tap the name of the chat. Tap the “Leave Group” button at the bottom of the screen. You can end conversations with as little as three people, unlike with iMessage.
On the Group Details page, tap Notifications to open a window with notification options if you only want to mute notifications. In order to keep your chat from ringing, you can choose to keep the conversation silent. Additionally, if you select Lock Screen, a pop-up menu will appear with the option to disable notifications. To enable, tap Don’t show alerts at all.
On an Android phone, hide and block MMS conversations
To access notification control options on an Android phone with Google Messages, take the same actions. This involves going to the MMS chat thread and then tapping the Group Details option by either the conversation’s name or the names of the participants at the top. The ability to press Notifications to access controls for hiding the chat is still there, but you won’t see a Leave Group option like you would with an RCS thread. This offers the same options to choose Don’t show alerts at all and to put the discussion on silent.
SMS, MMS, and RCS
Short Message Service, or SMS, made its debut in 1992. There is a 160 character limit on text messages. Multimedia Messaging Service, or MMS for short, allows you to transmit messages longer than 160 characters as well as images, videos, and other files. Whereas SMS may text several individuals at once but is sent as separate messages to each individual, MMS allows a group of people to chat in a single conversation thread. Rich Communication Services, or RCS for short, was introduced 15 years ago and contains end-to-end encryption, the ability to read receipts, and the ability to display typing indicators.
Despite having stronger privacy, encryption, and conversation settings than cross-platform chat apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram, they do not allow SMS, MMS, or RCS, independent of the type of phone being used. For this reason, even though group chats are on a less feature-rich, unprotected standard like MMS, the default messaging software on the majority of phones is still frequently utilized.
