How to Leave a Group Text

Chances are you've been there at one point or another: Your friends or family create a group text for some specific purpose, but the chatter never really dies down, leading to constant text notifications on your phone. While keeping in touch with your loved ones is great, sometimes the incessant updates from a group text are not.

Luckily, if you want to stop seeing group text notifications on your Android or iPhone, you have options. As you'll see below, depending on your situation you might not be able to leave the group text entirely without asking the person who started it to remove you, but at the very least you can mute notifications.

Leaving a Group Text on Android

Unfortunately, Android users can't leave a group text they've been roped into without flat-out asking to be removed — but they can choose to mute notifications.

The following instructions apply to the stock Android Messages texting app and Google Hangouts. If your Android phone uses a different texting app, like Messages on your Samsung phone, the process for leaving a group text may be different:

In Android Messages, navigate to the group text you want to mute.
Tap the three vertical dots in the upper right-hand corner of your phone's screen.
Tap People & options
Tap Notifications to turn off notifications for that particular group text.

Leaving a Group Text on an iPhone

If you're an iPhone user, you have a few options for muting unwanted group texts.

Option 1: Mute Notifications

The first option on iOS is to mute group text notifications. To do this, follow these steps:

Open the group text you want to mute.
Tap on the little Information button in the upper right-hand corner of your phone's screen.
Toggle on Do Not Disturb

By selecting Do Not Disturb, you will no longer get a notification (and the accompanying text sound) each time someone in the group text sends a new message. You'll still be able to view all new messages in the thread by opening the group text, but using this method allows you to cut down on distractions.

Option 2: Leave a Group Text on iOS

The way to really leave the conversation is easy (though it's important to note that this isn't always an option even if you're using the Messages app on your iPhone).

To be able to leave a group text on iOS, you'll need the following circumstances:

You must be in an iMessage conversation rather than a standard group text message. If some of the people in the group chat are using Android phones or other apps rather than Messages on iOS, you'll be in a standard group message and therefore the option to leave a group text through Messages won't be available.
There must be at least four people in a group text, the logic apparently being that if you were to leave a three-person conversation, it would no longer be a group text but rather just a simple text between two people. In any case, if you're in a three-person iMessage chat, the Leave this Conversation option will be grayed out.

If you are able to leave a group text on iOS, follow these instructions to do so:

Open the group iMessage you want to leave.
Tag on the little Information button in the upper right-hand corner of your phone's screen.
Find Leave this Conversation (in red, below the Do Not Disturb toggle option) and tap it.