Apple’s iMessage service is a convenient way to stay connected to your important text messages even if you’re away from your iPhone. Even better, you can choose to sync your messages across all your Apple devices. That said, there may be cases where you want to disconnect iMessage from your Mac. Maybe you don’t want to be bombarded with frequent notifications and can focus fully on your work. Or maybe you’re not interested in receiving all your iPhone messages on your Mac. Whatever the reason, it’s easy to turn off iMessage on a Mac. Let’s see how to do it.
How to turn off iMessage on Mac
If you want to disconnect iMessage from your Mac so that you do not receive any messages or notifications, you must disable iMessage on your MacBook. There are two ways to do this and we discuss them below. Let’s look at them one at a time.
Method 1: Turn off iMessage on Mac
The first and most convenient way to disconnect iMessage from a Mac is to disable iMessage in iCloud only on your Mac. When you do this, you will stop receiving iMessages on your Mac. The best part is that this method will not affect iMessage on your iPhone, iPad or any other device where you’re signed in with the same Apple ID. These are the steps to do it:
- Open the Messages app on your Mac.
- In the menu bar present at the top, click on Messages and choose Settings from the drop-down list.
- Here, move to the iMessage tab. Make sure you are in the Settings section of this page.
- In Apple ID, uncheck “Enable messages in iCloud”” option.
- Now, choose the “Disable this device” option in the pop-up menu. This will disconnect iMessages from your Mac.
- In case you want to disable iMessage on other devices as well, choose Disable all in the pop-up window.
Method 2: Sign out of iMessage on Mac
If you don’t want to see iMessage notifications on your MacBook, you can simply sign out of iMessage on your Mac and also your Apple ID. Once you completely sign out of iMessage, you will not receive any messages or notifications. Here’s how to do it:
Warning
This method will sign you out of your Apple ID on your Mac. As a result, you will lose access to all other Apple services. Proceed only if you are ready to accept the results.
- Open the Messages app on your Mac.
- Click on Messages in the menu bar at the top and choose Settings from the drop-down list.
- Here, move to the iMessage tab and click on the Disconnect next to your Apple ID.
- Finally, click Disconnect to confirm your decision.
How to turn off iMessage notifications on Mac
It becomes very annoying when you are bombarded with iMessage notifications, especially if you are in the middle of something important. Imagine you have a deadline for a project and your spouse, children, or friends are constantly messaging you. I know how annoying it can be. If you don’t want to disconnect from iMessage on your Mac but want peace of mind that no one will disturb you during work, you can turn off iMessage notifications. You can read the messages during breaks or whenever you want.
Here are two ways to silence iMessage notifications on a MacBook.
Method 1: from system settings
- On your Mac, go to Apple Menu -> System Settings.
- Here, click Notifications.
- Scroll down and choose Messages of the list.
- Now, turn off the Enable notifications lever.
Method 2: From the Messages app
- Open the Messages app from the Dock.
- In the menu bar, click Messages and then choose the Settings option.
- Now click on the General tab.
- Finally, uncheck the Play sound effects option to mute iMessage notifications on Mac.
Here’s how you can disconnect iMessage from Mac. While there are two ways to turn off iMessage on a Mac, we prefer to turn off iMessage instead of signing out of Apple ID completely. You can continue using the other Apple services associated with your Apple ID without any problem. We hope this article helped you sign out of iMessage on Mac. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us in the comments section below.
In case you are having trouble using iMessage, here is our guide on how to fix iMessage not working on iPhone, iPad or Mac.
