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How to Disable Text Message Previews on Galaxy S6

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This guide will show Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge owners how to disable text message previews, popups, and lockscreen information to keep privacy under control. Now that the phone has been available for a few months we’re receiving a lot of questions, and one is about the text message popups showing sensitive information.

With the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge Samsung redesigned the entire user interface on top of Android 5.0 Lollipop, and along with it came a lot of changes. One of those is a neat popup preview of text messages, and a preview of the message on the lockscreen, and some users want to hide that sensitive information.

Read: How to Reset a Frozen Galaxy S6

On the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge using the stock text message app users will get a popup notification sharing a preview of the message, on the notification bar ticker at the top of the screen, and even on the lockscreen. And while this is convenient for many, some may want to hide or disable this from being shown. Read on to find out how.

Galaxy S6-itunes

The default text message app that’s built into these phones is a great application, but there are countless 3rd party text apps for Android with lots of settings that will fix this problem. Personally our advice would be to try one of the many outlined below, Textra is one of my favorites.

Read: How to Change the Galaxy S6 Text Message App

However, if you’d like to continue using what’s already installed, below are some instructions to hide some of those notifications, popups, and information on the lockscreen to keep things more private.

Disable the Popup

The most convenient feature, one that’s also rather intrusive is the popup window showing in incoming text message on the Galaxy S6. This popup shows who the message is from and a preview of the conversation, which can get users in trouble at work or share sensitive information. This is the biggest one we’ve received questions about, and here’s how to disable it.

S6-messages

Open the default “Messages” app and tap the more button on the top right, then choose settings > notifications > and turn off “Pop-up display” to get rid of this. It’s that easy, and shown in the image below.

S6-messages1

This completely removes the popup window that users see when an incoming text message is received. This removes the popup, but messages will still be shown in the notification bar at the top of the page (sliding and showing a preview) as well as your lockscreen, so lets disable those as well.

Lockscreen Text Preview

In the past we’ve detailed how to enable message previews on the lockscreen, but this is about disabling them. If Galaxy S6 owners don’t want an incoming message and its content to be displayed on the lockscreen, here’s how to disable that.

S6-text-lockscreen

Head into settings by tapping the gear-shaped icon at the top of the notification bar, or in the apps menu. Then select “Sounds & notifications” and scroll down to “notifications on lockscreen“. From here select to hide content. This will still show notifications on the lockscreen from messages, Facebook, Gmail and more, but it won’t show the contents. To remove everything, select Do not show notifications.

Read: 65 Galaxy S6 Tips & Tricks

Last but not least, and as we mentioned above, users can also simply try using a different text message application. My favorite is Textra, which has options to show contact information in notifications or leave it blank, or to even hide the message contents on all incoming notifications. This way you’ll know you have a new notification, but can choose what it shows.

There are countless 3rd party text message apps on the Google Play Store with tons of privacy controls. ChompSMS is another popular one, but the steps above will fix these issues for those who’d rather stick to the stock app available on the Galaxy S6. For even more tips and tricks hit the link above.

15 Comments

15 Comments

  1. Reba

    06/01/2015 at 3:03 pm

    I wonder who thought this would be a great idea … good to see there are solutions to this issue!

  2. liz

    06/02/2015 at 9:00 am

    This does not work. I spoke to Samsung and they said it cant be switched off. The next up date may give this option but unless theres enough complaints about it they dont see it as an issue.

  3. Moe Zambique

    06/02/2015 at 11:30 pm

    This is dumb. I just want my text msgs not to be displayed on my lock screen. Why must I disable any and & notifications from displaying contents or nothing? Stupid

  4. Marsha

    06/12/2015 at 12:55 pm

    I just purchased the SG S6 and I haven’t seen my issue addressed anywhere. I use the goSMS app and I’m happy with it. My problem is that when i go to my contacts to make a phone call, all of my texts to and from that person are available for me to read and reply to from their contact card and I cannot find a setting to disable that “feature” or to delete the texts from my contact list only. I’m sure they would disappear if I were to delete them from my texting app but I just want them hidden from that area. Any answers?

    • lp

      06/19/2015 at 9:46 pm

      I have the same concern. Were you able to find a solution? Thanks

  5. Elise C.

    07/21/2015 at 1:28 pm

    This explains how to disable pop ups and messages on the lock screen. It said at the beginning it would also show how to disable the text preview in the notification bar, but I don’t see that in this article. Anyone know about that? I could disable that on my s4.

    • Dana

      08/13/2015 at 8:53 am

      That is my question also! On my S3 I could disable the scrolling preview on the notification bar so it would just say “New Message”. I don’t see a way to do that on the S6 without downloading a 3rd party app.

      • Tanya Hebert

        09/15/2015 at 9:59 am

        that’s what i am sayin!! I don’t want another app, i just DON’T want my phone to display my incoming message in the status bar, i show people things on my phone all the time, i would hate for them to read something private as we are scrolling thru a page.

  6. Veronica

    08/17/2015 at 8:21 am

    I hated my S3 sold it cause it would not just show new message this is a piec
    e of shit to me now wish I would have not purchased it

    • Trey

      10/04/2015 at 12:56 pm

      You’re an imbecile lol

  7. Piper Doucet

    08/28/2015 at 3:22 pm

    There is no SOLUTION TO THE POP UP MESSAGING PROBLEM. TRIED EVERYTHING I’VE RED ABOUT HOW TO MALE IT STOP AND I CA NY

  8. ykb

    09/16/2015 at 4:38 pm

    There’s also another option:

    Instead of going to “Notifications on Locked Screen” and then “hiding content”, you can goto “App notifications” then choose “Messages” then turn ON “Hide content on lock screen” which will ONLY hide the content of the messages app on locked screen. HOWEVER, it will still display the message content in the notification section up top if the screen is unlocked.

  9. Imran

    10/12/2015 at 12:25 am

    Want to hide incoming messages notification on the status bar? It shows sender name and msg. I want to hide that? If I unchecked the messages notification it simply quite the message tune even not vibrate at all.

  10. loadnabox

    10/29/2015 at 7:06 am

    “The most convenient feature, one that’s also rather intrusive is the popup window showing in incoming text message on the Galaxy S6. ”

    Convenient? nonononono. Things getting in the way of what I’m trying to do are hardly convenient.

    It’s like some moron at a dev lab in a foreign country was all, “Hey! I have good idea! You know universally most hated thing on entire internet that have billion dollar industry of people trying to stop it? YEAH POPUPS! let do that on phone with messages! People love it instead when it messages! They gonna love it so much we turn it on by default! YAY US!”

    P.S. Thanks for the info, worked perfectly on t-mobile s6 with 5.1.1

  11. Jojo

    11/06/2015 at 4:12 am

    The way I was able to remove it was to press and hold the text message window and an icon appears that says remove, when that is pressed it removes the text message box.

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