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.
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.
3. Under “Notification Style,” scroll until you see the “Messages” tab. Tap it.
4. Under “Options” you’ll see a setting for “Show Previews.” Open the tab and select “Never” or “When Unlocked.”
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.
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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