Main points
- Read notifications ease your worries by letting you know if your message has been sent and read.
- Setting up reading notifications on Android is easy with RCS messaging.
- Read receipts only apply to RCS chat, not text messages; apps like WhatsApp support reading notifications across platforms.
Sometimes sending a message to someone is hard enough – maybe it’s something important, or maybe you have something to confess that takes a lot of courage. Once you work up the courage to send a text message, you have to be patient and wait for a reply. This can be nerve-wracking, especially when the other person is taking their sweet time. Now is the time for all doubts and worries to come out.
This is why reading notifications is so important to many people. They show you that the message was sent and then let you know if the other person has read it.
One of the things that can make you less anxious is knowing that someone hasn’t come to read your words yet. This means they’re not ghosting or ignoring you – they’re just not looking at their phone, or at least not reading the messages, so not responding is just a logistical issue and not our fault at all.
This is why reading notifications is so important to many people. They show you that the message was sent, and then notify you if the other person has read it (of course that means opening it and seeing the text, and let’s be honest, reading is another story). They can be enabled and disabled, but turning them on is a great way to alleviate those insecurities.
If you have an Android phone (whether it’s a budget phone or the best flagship phone), setting up reading notifications is easy. Here’s how to do this and how to check if your message has been read.
How to set up RCS chat on your Android phone
Do you want to turn on RCS messaging function on your Android phone? Here’s how to turn it on and everything you need to know about this feature.
Read notification status
As convenient as it is to read notifications, they’re also a bit problematic when you think about it. If you’re on the fence about whether to turn them on or off, here’s what you need to know:
Advantages of read notifications
As I mentioned before, the main advantage of read notifications is basically the peace of mind they give you. You’re sure the message was sent and delivered, but you also know if someone hasn’t had time to read the text yet, so you might avoid some misunderstandings or unnecessary hurt feelings.
Disadvantages of read notifications
However, with all information comes great responsibility. While read notifications are useful, they can also cause considerable trouble. First of all, it can really put a damper on your mood if you know someone read your message but didn’t respond, because sometimes it’s better not to know.
But this information also raises some privacy concerns. Shouldn’t information you have read or not read be kept confidential? Or should the other party have the right to know too? It’s hard to answer this question one way or another, but it’s definitely something to think about and discuss when talking about read notifications.
How to track and find a lost Android phone
Google makes it easy to find your lost Android device. You can even look it up directly from Google Search.
How to turn on read notifications on Android
So if you decide to start using read notifications, you first have to enable them. Fortunately, now that Android has switched to RCS messaging, it’s very easy – you just open RCS chat and follow the extra steps.
- Open message Apps on your smartphone.
- Click your Profile picture In the upper right corner.
- Next, click Message settings.
- Once there, click RCS cat Options are at the top.
- Check if your RCS chat is open by toggling Open RCS chat Switch to “On”.
- When the RCS chat is on, go down and toggle Send read receipt. This will allow your phone to notify the person you are texting that you have read their text message, and allow you to receive these notifications from their phone (if they have RCS chat enabled).
How to see which Android apps are running from Quick Settings
By closely monitoring the apps running in your Android device, you can easily avoid speed performance issues and improve battery health.
How to know someone read your text messages
So you’ve turned on read receipts, and you’re ready to dive into the world of knowledge – or at least know who read your messages and when. Now how do you check that your text has been read? It’s very easy – just follow these steps:
Open your message app
- Go to the conversation you recently messaged.
- Under Latest News you will see one of the following three icons Indicates message status and timer. The time tells you when the message received the status, and the status icon indicates one of three states:
- an empty circle with a tick ——The message has been sent.
- Two empty circles with check marks — The message has been sent to the recipient.
- Two filled circles with check marks — The recipient has read the message.
As you can see, checking the reading status of messages on Android is very simple. However, having said that, there is a detail to remember.Because this feature relies on RCS messaging, you and the other party need RCS chat is on. If you use regular old text messages, you won’t receive these read receipts.
What does “sent as SMS via server” mean? What causes this on Android?
When sending a message from your phone, you may see “Sent as SMS via server.” The reason for this is very simple and we will tell you.
Is this feature available between Android and iOS?
As I mentioned, the read notifications feature works on Android thanks to RCS Chat. This is great news for Android users, but it means read receipts won’t work when you message someone using your iPhone. Like the other way around, you just use SMS this way, it doesn’t have chat features like read receipts.
If you want to get read receipts when messaging other people using your iPhone, you’ll need to use another messaging app, such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger – they also allow this feature cross-platform.