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How to Turn Off 'Mentions' Notifications in iOS 14

I love many of the improvements Apple made to Messages in iOS 14 and iPadOS 14—pinned conversations, inline replies, and mentions are all great features. However, that last one can get a bit out of hand if your friends like to drop your name into your group chats. But there’s something you can do about it.

By default (at least, on my device), iOS 14 / iPadOS 14 now notifies you whenever someone says your name in a message thread. While that alone might result in more notifications than you’d prefer to receive, the problem is compounded by the fact that it happens even if you’ve muted the conversations in which you’re being name-dropped.

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I realize this is Apple’s attempt to be helpful by making sure you see messages relevant to you, but I would also wager that muting a conversation means you’re not looking to be pulled back into it. A perfect solution would be to provide a second toggle to indicate—on a per-conversation basis—whether you’d like to be bothered for any reason at all, but that option doesn’t exist. It’s all or nothing in iOS 14 / iPadOS 14. If you’re more on the side of “nothing,” here’s how you can turn these mentions notifications off. Spoiler: It’s easy.

To get started, pull up your Settings app and scroll down a bit until you see Messages. Tap on it, and then scroll down a little bit more until you find this option:

Credit: David Murphy

Disable it, and you won’t receive any notifications if someone mentions your name. That does mean that you’ll also lose that fun functionality for conversations you care about, but maybe that’s not the worst thing. Just because someone mentions your name in passing doesn’t mean that they need your prompt attention. And good luck managing these minor annoyances if you’re in a chat with someone who shares your name—I’m often chatting with two other Davids, so I know how that can go.

I appreciate iOS 14's Slack-like implementation of name notifications, but I do think that the way to go is to provide more granular controls. Perhaps we’ll get them in iOS 15? iOS 16?