A Complete Guide to Disable iMessage on Mac

iMessage is designed as the default chat application in Apple's ecosystem, including the Mac, iPhone, and iPad devices. It helps a lot if you want to receive and send messages from your Mac rather than your phone. Unfortunately, this feature can also be annoying when you want to stay focused but get interrupted by it a lot.

If you are bothered by iMessage on Mac and want to turn it off for higher productivity, read this post to know how to turn off iMessage on Mac in two easy ways.

How to turn off iMessage on Mac completely

If you want to put things right once and for all, disabling iMessage on your Mac would be a feasible choice. Considering that you may want to still utilize this feature off the Mac, it's suggested to leave it on your iOS devices. Let's see how to get rid of iMessage on Mac with ease.

Step 1. Open Messages from the Dock. Alternatively, you can find and open it from Launchpad. Or, you can go to Finder > Applications > Messages.

Step 2. When you enter the Messages pane, go to the top-left corner and click on Messages to enter Preferences…

Step 3. In Messages settings, check iMessage from the top menu bar.

Step 4. You can see your Apple ID, phone number, and email address. Under your Apple ID, uncheck the box in front of Enable Message in iCloud to stop messages from sending to your Mac.

For those who want to deactivate iMessage, you can choose to sign out your Apple ID. In that case, you can only receive messages when you sign in to your account again.

If you stay concentrated on work without iMessage interrupting using this method, why not share it with your friend?

How to turn off iMessage notifications on Mac

It's more common that people want to chat on Mac but just don't like being interrupted by iMessage notifications. Under this circumstance, instead of shutting off iMessage, disabling notifications on Mac seems to be a better option.

Step 1. Go to the Apple menu and click on System Preference… from the top-left corner of your screen.

Step 2. Enter Notifications & Focus. In some macOS versions, it's named Notifications.

Step 3. You can see a list of applications in the left column. Scroll down to find Message and click on it.

Step 4. You can notice there are a lot to adjust in the window, toggle off Allow Notifications to quickly silence notifications from Message.

After turning off notifications from Message, you can avoid being distracted by pop-ups while signing in to your Message account on Mac. If you wish to mute all notifications during a certain period of time, learn more about Do Not Disturb or Focus Mode on your Mac.

Enjoying a pure working environment can be awesome, please share the solutions above with more people!

How to stop the iPhone from syncing messages to Mac

Oftentimes, it's not the Messages messing around but the texts from your iPhone keeping you distracted. How to keep the messages on your Mac but make them separate from those on your phone? Before getting started, there are a few things you should know.

The aim of Message is to offer you access to messages on all Apple devices you've signed to. Therefore, there's no separate setting to stop your iPhone from syncing messages to your Mac device. The following solution can work but it might end up with fragmented conversations across two devices. If you are fine with that, keep reading on.

Step 1. On your Mac, enter iMessage from Messages > Preferences.

Step 2. Find your phone number and uncheck it. However, make sure to check the email address.

Step 3. On your iPhone, open Settings > Messages. With iMessage turned on, you can click on the option below, Send & Receive.

Step 4. Check your phone number only. Uncheck any email address here.

This way, messages from your iPhone are separated from those on your Mac.