Friday, February 18, 2011

What is the iPhone 4's "Group Messaging"?

After you upgraded your iPhone to iOS4, you may have noticed some strange behavior with your group texts. Specifically, you may have sent a group text, had someone reply to you, and then been told by other recipients that they also got the reply.  Or, you may have been the recipient of someone's group text, followed by a reply from one of the recipients.  This behavior is due to a feature released with the iPhone 4 (and in iOS 4) called "Group Messaging".  This post will explain what group messaging is, and how you can disable/enable it if you desire.

Update: There seems to be no way to disable Group Messaging for iMessages. Even if you have Group Messaging disabled, it will still send as a Group Message if all of the recipients are iMessage-able. Be sure to keep an eye on the color of your send button (blue for iMessage, green for SMS) to know which one you're using!


Do you send group text messages? Do you send messages to the same group of people often? Social Chair SMS manages your group-text lists, and helps you effortlessly send out messages to multiple people.

"Group Messaging" works under the assumption that you'd like your group texts to function as a text-message chat room, in which all of the recipients can also chat to each other.  Since this behavior might be unexpected, it unfortunately could be the cause of a serious social snafu as well.  As a group message sender, if you have Group Messaging enabled, you send a slightly-bigger version of your group text to your recipients, that also contains the information for the other recipients getting the text.  If one of your recipients also has Group Messaging enabled, she should be able to see who the recipients were, and when she replies to the group text, she will reply to all of the recipients.

To clarify, the reply-all only happens if both the sender and the receiver/replier of the text message have Group Messaging enabled.  The other recipients do not need to have it enabled to receive the reply all.

So, now that we know what Group Messaging is, you can make an informed decision about whether you'd like it on.  If you keep it on and reply to a group text message, you may be replying to everyone.  If you keep it on and send a group text, you are setting up other iPhone 4 users to possibly be able to reply-all to your message.

To enable/disable Group Messaging, open the Settings application on your iPhone.  Scroll down to the section titled "Messages" (with the SMS app icon) and tap on it to open the Messages settings.   About two-thirds of the way down the screen, you should see "Group Messaging"; you can turn the switch to on or off to enable or disable Group Messaging.

We hope this has been helpful -- I for one was completely baffled the first time I received a reply-all message, especially because I didn't recognize the number for the sender!  Also, if you're reading this because you send a lot of group text messages, we hope you'll check out our app on the App Store for sending group texts: Social Chair SMS.

10 comments:

  1. when you send a group message, it is received by non-iphone users as a date, thus they need to turn on their mobile network to be able to receive the message. If receiver does not have data plan, there's no way the recipient will read the txt message. Any solution on this?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Ariel,

      I wasn't aware of that -- perhaps that is a consequence of the group message being an MMS message, even if there is no media (the group info is the media). You could disable the group messaging, so it's sent as individual SMS messages?

      Delete
  2. I have group text turned off and just sent a pic to my family. When my brother replied it sent it to everyone. I thought turning it off would stop that? What can I do?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Btw he doesn't have an iphone

      Delete
    2. Hi Ashley,

      I just ran a test of that myself, and I was surprised at what I found! It looks like the issue might be that because it has an image (and is therefore an MMS message already), the iPhone sends out the group message data. I'm running my own test -- we'll see if the recipients group text back.

      Delete
    3. Very interesting! I sent a message to an iPhone phone and an Android phone with Group Messaging turned off. As we guessed, it got sent with the group message headers because of the picture! I think I need to break this down:

      - Because there was a picture with the message, the SMS is really an MMS. I'm guessing there is a bug right here that adds the group message info (even if the setting is off) because it's an MMS message.

      - The iPhone recipient had Group Messaging off, so he just saw a plain message from me, with no information about the other recipients. When he replied, only I got it.

      - The Android recipient received the Group Message info and saw all of the recipients. When he replied, everyone got it.

      - When I got the Android response, because I have group messaging off, I just saw a normal message from him with no additional recipient info.

      So with pictures, the Group Messaging settings don't matter, just like with all iMessages. Maybe it's time for me to find someone who works on the Messaging app to talk to :)

      The good takeaway is that with Group Messaging off, you should be safe on your replies. You should receive all non-iMessage texts with the sender only as the header, which means you'll reply just to her/him.

      If you see multiple people in the title of the thread, your message is going to multiple people.

      Delete
  3. This is the nice features in i-phones with the help of this we can send the message with in groups. I like it and thank for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  5. There needs to be a way to leave a conversation. Like maybe a drop down box with that option when you no longer want to be part of the conversation, as well as a reply to all and just reply options. It is insane when u get a group message that was sent to 195 people on Christmas Eve and MANY of them replying with complaints about the group message.

    ReplyDelete
  6. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.