Just an annoying little bug in Apple Messages or something more?

TidBITS Talk
1

Forgive me if this seems trivial, as far as minor glitches go, but perhaps someone has some insight into what’s going on.

In my exchange of texts with friends who also have Macs and iPhones, for a long time we had the ability to affirm in Messages settings “Send read receipts”, which enabled us to automatically send a confirmation of reading someone’s text to us. This meant that not only would they see a “delivered” notification, but also a “read” notification, which was handy for verifying that one’s text had been actually read.

With friends where we both have the “Send read receipts” checked in our Messages settings, this used to mean we both saw whether and when one of our texts were read.

But somewhere – in my case – during a switchover to a new Mac mini a year or so ago, and in a switch to a new iPhone 15, I stopped receiving the notifications that my texts had been read. I still had the “Send read receipts” turned on in my Mac settings and my iPhone settings, and friends were seeing confirmation when I read their texts, but I no longer was getting confirmations that they had read mine.

Can anyone suggest what might be behind this discrepancy?

Thanks for your consideration and help. I find TidBITS readers to be among the most knowledgeable and helpful Apple users I am aware of.

2

As I understand it, that is an error on the side that is sending the receipt. Yours are being received. Have your friends checked their settings?

Apple has a long and continuing history of over-writing users settings during updates.

3

My friends have the same settings checked for sending receipts at their end, but I do not receive them. That’s the curious part.

—Jay

4

I notice the mention of friends, plural. Is this a problem with group messages, or one-to-one messages? (Or both?) I see the “Read” status in one-to-one messages, but I suspect not in group messages… although I’m not quite sure, now I think about it - only a few people I know have “Send read receipts” turned on.

5

That’s my experience also. You only see “Delivered”/“Read” in one-to-one conversations, not group discussions.

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6

This is a problem with one-to-one messages between me and friends with whom I often text back and forth. I understand that group messages would not likely send read receipts, as that would be complicated by the multiple senders and receivers. In this case, both I and my friends have “Send read receipts” turned on, but I do not receive their read receipts. They do receive mine.

Perhaps we just need to switch out our “Send read receipts” settings and restart our Macs and iPhones and then turn that setting on again. We have not tried that kluge.

Like I said earlier, it is not a big deal, but it is annoying. Thanks for everyone’s input.

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