Oliver Haslam·

An iMessage Bug Could Cause Read Receipts To Be Sent Even When Disabled

Read receipts are one of the best features of iMessage, allowing people to see when their messages have been read by the recipient.

But there are plenty of reasons someone might want to disable those read receipts and iMessage makes that possible as well. Except an old bug appears to be rearing its head once again where read receipts are sent even when the entire feature has been disabled.

First reported by Macworld, the bug is affecting a majority of people on iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 while a fix is proving difficult to identify.

However, a number of people report that with Send Read Receipts disabled on their devices, people can still see when they read messages. This problem has cropped up seemingly briefly with previous releases of iOS and iPadOS, but I see a spate of reports with iOS 15, including the latest updates, in which people have a mismatch between their setting and other people being made aware of their status.

Some people report being able to get things back in step by signing out of their Apple ID and then back in again, but that’s a process that you won’t want to do too often and even then, there is no guarantee that it will work. Realistically, this is a bug that Apple needs to fix and fingers are crossed that it happens soon.

Unfortunately the only way to know whether this bug is impacting you is for the person that’s sending you messages to tell you that they’re receiving read receipts when they shouldn’t be.

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