How to Send Read Receipts to Specific Contact in Messages for Mac

Read Receipts in iMessage allow the sender of a message to know when a recipient has received it, and both the Mac OS and iOS Messages apps support this feature when communicating with other iMessage users. But many Mac users don’t want to send Read Receipts to everyone, and with the latest versions of Mac OS you can now selectively choose who to send read receipts to. In practice, this is basically the same as turning on Read Receipts for specific contacts on iPhone and iPad, except it applies to reading and sending iMessages from the Messages app on the Mac.

This assumes you have Read Receipts in Messages for Mac turned off. You can adjust that setting in the Messages Preferences for individual iMessage accounts.

Send Read Receipts to Specific Contacts in Messages for Mac

1. Open the Messages app on Mac if you have not done so yet and then open a conversation with a contact you’d like to send Read Receipts to specifically
2. Click on the “Details” button in the corner of the message window



3. Check the box for “Send Read Receipts” to selectively send read receipts to only that specific contact



4. Repeat with other Message threads and contacts if desired

If you’re going to be enabling per-contact read receipts on the Mac, you’ll probably also want to allow per contact Read Receipts in iOS so that your experience sending them out is consistent on all Mac, iPhone, and iPad hardware.

Remember, to send individual read receipts to specific contacts, you must have Read Receipts turned off broadly, which you then selectively enable with the above tip. This is the same on the Mac, toggled on or off through Messages Preferences, and on the mobile side with iPhone and iPad, where you can turn off all read receipts in iMessage for iOS through Messages Settings.