How to disable iMessage/iMessage notifications on Mac

The iMessage app on Mac is a very helpful feature that allows you to stay in touch with other users of the platform even when your phone nearby. The tool also syncs your texts between your Mac, iPhone or, iPad so that you don’t miss out on any messages you may receive.

Some users, however, may sometimes get irritated by the push notifications that iMessage uses to let you know that someone has texted you. These notifications can indeed get quite obstructive if you are trying to get some work done but someone keeps texting you, thus disrupting your focus.

If you are in a similar situation and want to temporarily “mute” the messages coming from this app, you may be relieved to learn that there is an easy way to do this. In fact, there are two methods to make the notifications from iMessage stop, and we are about to explain them to you within the next paragraphs.

Disabling the iMessage app vs stopping its push notifications

As we pointed out, there are two distinct ways to make the obstructive messages stop. The first one is to disable the app itself, which will stop the push notifications when someone is texting you but you won’t be able to use the app until you re-enable it. The second method is to only disable the push notifications of iMessage without stopping the app itself. Depending on which option suits your needs better, follow either of the respective short guides from down below.

How to disable the iMessage app on Mac

1. First, you must access the Messages application – you can do that by selecting it from your Dock (the strip at the bottom of your screen). If the Messages app isn’t added to the Dock, you can open Finder and go to Applications, where you can find and open the app.
2. From the menu bar of the Applications app, select the Messages menu, click on Preferences, and go to the Accounts section.
3. In the left panel of the Accounts section, there will be a list of the accounts that are currently enabled on the Messages app – click on the account you are currently using/the one you want to disable (you should see “iMessage” written below it).
4. Remove the tick from the Enable this account checkbox and then click on Sign out. This will sign you out of that account for iMessage and you will no longer receive notifications for it.
5. If you want to re-enable iMessages for that account, co back to the Accounts section, select the account, and then Sign in with your password.

How to disable iMessage push notifications

Unlike the previous method, following the next steps will allow you to stop the unwanted message notifications while still keeping the Messages app enabled so that you could use it at any time.

1. First, go to the Apple Menu (you will find it in the top-left corner of the screen) and click on System Preferences.
2. From the window that gets displayed, open the Notifications icon and then choose the Messages app from the left side of your screen.
3. Now, from the central panel of the window, change the Messages alert style to None. After you do this, iMessage will no longer notify you whenever someone texts you but you will still be able to see the texts when you open the Messages app. If you want to bring back the push-notifications, repeat Steps 1 – 3 but this time pick the Alerts or the Banners alert style.