Filtering your iPhone messages can be very handy if you receive tons of messages on any given day that are hard to sort through.
What’s great is that you don’t need to download a third-party app to do it; your iPhone is already equipped with a text-filtering feature in the Messages app.
How to Use an iPhone’s Message Filter
Gone are the days that you had to sift through unknown messages just to delete spam and junk from people you don’t even know.
With the iPhone’s message-filtering feature, you can filter messages based on your contacts list. That means all messages that come from people on your contacts list go to the Known Senders list.
Everyone else—including unsaved numbers, couriers, one-time codes, and spam—go straight to the Unknown Senders list instead.
This feature is turned off by default, but you can turn it on at any time.
Below is a step-by-step process on how to enable message filtering on your iPhone:
- Go to Settings. Then scroll down and tap Messages.
- Scroll down and enable Filter Unknown Senders.
- Now open Messages and tap Filters in the top left of the screen.
- Under All Messages, you will see two new message filters: Known Senders and Unknown Senders.
- Tap a filter to see the associated message list.
- Go back to the lists by tapping Filters in the top left of the screen.
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for (var i = 0; i Turning on the option to Filter Unknown Senders allows you to focus on your Known Senders list most of the time, only checking your Unknown Senders list when you feel like it.
You can always turn off the filter option by going back to Settings and disabling the Filter Unknown Sender option.
A Warning About Message Filtering
Once you enable this feature, text messages from people you know who aren’t saved in your contacts list will still head straight to the Unknown Senders list.
So, if you are someone who keeps forgetting to add a friend’s number to your contacts list, now is the time to save their contact details. Otherwise, you might miss their next message.
However, if send a message first that conversation will always appear in the Known Senders list—even if the recipient isn’t in your contacts list.
Access Important Messages Fast
Numerous messages from daily transactions can quickly flood the Messages app and make you miss important texts from family, friends, and work colleagues.
Filtering messages isn’t just neat; it can even save you the need to sift through an already cluttered inbox.