How to Hide Facebook Message Previews On Your Lock Screen

This brief article has been composed to show you how simple it can be to turn off notification previews for your Facebook account to prevent nosy people from reading your messages.

Hello friends! It’s Frankie here to give you yet another useful hack to increase your privacy level on Facebook Messenger.

When you are signed into Messenger on your device, with each new message a preview will appear on your lock screen. While you rarely get the entire message, it still can allow prying eyes to learn who you are conversing with, as well as small pieces of the conversations you are having.

Fortunately, there is a solution to keep this from happening.

An easy way to do this is simply to get into the settings on Facebook Messenger and deactivate message previews altogether, but there are some things that you need to understand about this choice:

• You will no longer get any message previews from Facebook Messenger
• Once deactivated, the only notification you receive will be the name of the sender.
• In terms of protecting your privacy through Facebook, you should be aware that the same option exists for WhatsApp users.
• Sound alerts are still going to happen with this selection made.

Now that you know a little more about what you can expect with this setting modified, here is how you accomplish this feat.

How to Turn Off Facebook Messenger Notification Previews on iPhone

Hide Messenger previews on iPhone or iPad is quite simple. Believe me when I tell you that it really only takes a few seconds.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Launch Messenger app
2. Click on your profile picture (you can find it in the top left corner of your screen)
3. Tap on Notifications and sounds
4. Turn off (swipe left) Show previews

In this way you will disable the preview in alerts and banners..

Please note: remember that when you receive a new message, the system will notify you and will show you the name of the contact who sent it (as always), but no longer the text.

You can see an example of this below.

Instead of the preview of the message like you might be used to seeing, your lock screen notification might read more like “Anthony sent you a message”.

Without the passcode to your phone, previewing or reading this entire message will be impossible.

How to Turn Off Facebook Messenger Notification Previews on Android Devices

Turn off Messenger previews on an Android device is extremely simple and does not require any computer skills. Moreover, it takes only a few seconds.

Follow these steps:

1. Open your Messenger app
2. Click on the icon with your profile picture (located in the upper left corner)
   
3. Click on Notifications & Sounds
4. Turn off Notification previews

That’s it, now the future notifications you receive will get hidden on the lock screen of your device.

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As you may have noticed, what we have seen so far does not shield you from nosey people 100%. In fact, even though the notification previews have been disabled, you will still get an alert on the screen of your cell phone that notifies you when a new message arrives.

I’ll tell you how to prevent this from happening and thus permanently eliminate any trace of Messenger notification from the screen of your smartphone.

If you have an iOS device (iPhone or iPad) proceed as follows:

1. Open Settings
2. Scroll down until you find Messenger and click on it
3. Tap on Notifications
4. Turn off Allow Notifications

If you have Android devices follow these steps:

1. Launch Settings app
2. Click on Notifications
3. All the apps installed on your device will be displayed. Find and click on Messenger
4. Turn off Show notifications

Alright, from now on any message you receive on Messenger will not be notified in any way, and the only way you’ll know if someone has written to you is to open the app and check.

Why Should You Hide Notification Previews For Your Lock Screen

You might not think about it, but someone can learn quite a few things about you through the small pieces of conversation they can read from your lock screen message previews. With the preview being lengthy enough to give readers the general idea of the content of the entire conversation, your privacy is at serious risk every time that you put down your phone for a minute and step away.

Worry not about your device not telling you about incoming messages, as Facebook Messenger will continue to behave in the same manner it always has, with the familiar tone and look. The only difference will be the lack of a message preview, which can help to protect your privacy.

If your phone is password protected (as it certainly should be) there are no concerns about the wrong people reading conversations you are having.

Conclusion

I hope that the information I provided you with about how to hide notification preview helped you.

If you want to keep your Messenger chats even safer I suggest you to have a look at my guide on how to hide apps on your smartphone.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, do not hesitate to drop a comment below so I can get in touch with you. Alternatively you can contact me on my Instagram profile.

Love,

Frankie Caruso