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Controlling a Friend's Bad Text Habits

E

elliots11

macrumors member
Original poster
May 23, 2011
51
12
I have a good friend who is the absolute worst text messager since he got an iPhone. We've had numerous conversations about it, he doesn't stop. It's like he's a reasonably smart guy, but an idiot when it comes to social norms of texting. There's 2 things he does that drives me nuts:

1. He texts me early on the weekends, waking me up and throwing off my sleep schedule (High Priority). These messages are never important, and if they ever were, well it's TS for him.

2. He sends 3-4 texts in a row to complete a single thought, that should really only take 1 text resulting in multiple dings on my iPhone, often when I have something important going on, like trying to turn left across a busy street in my car.

Do Not Disturb
- I know I can turn on Do Not Disturb, and I would schedule it, but I can't schedule Do Not Disturb to differentiate the weekends from the week, and I don't want calls blocked in the morning on weekdays.
- I'm not going to remember to turn on Do Not Disturb for everybody every weekend manually, plus I work in an industry where I'll get emergency calls from numbers I don't know that I need to take.
- I like to sleep in on the weekends, I just do, not interested in hearing about whether that's good or bad. Plus I like to stay out late.
- I just need to block one dude, some of the time.

3rd Party Apps
Before I block his texts completely, I'd like to see if there's an app that can help Do Not Disturb work on specific contacts or vary a bit based on a schedule or both.

All of the apps I've seen in the app store, even the $10 one, do not set it up to work on a schedule. If anyone knows of one I'd buy it.

So I'm looking for an app or apps that:
1. Allows me to control my Do Not Disturb list by specific contacts on a schedule. I don't want to block everybody, I don't even want to block a single person all of the time; What I want is to block one person some of the time.
I want to silence text alerts from 1 single contact for the hours of 4AM - 11:30 AM on the weekends. Is there an app for that?

2. Possibly a separate app that reduces repeat notifications of text messages from a single number, lower priority.
 
tarsins said:
Not what you asked but could you set his contact text tone to "None"?
Click to expand...

That is actually a really great idea, and I'm not sure why I didn't think of it before, so thank you and I just did it. I think I'd still prefer more granularity if I can find if/where that's available, but in the meantime this is better than blocking his number entirely.
 
There is do not disturb specifically on a per-message/conversation level that could be used for that person: http://www.imore.com/how-mute-block-and-report-imessage-spam-iphone-and-ipad

Also, the system-wide do not disturb can be configured to allow calls to come through (either all calls, those from contacts, or those from just favorite contacts, for example), while all other notifications, like for messages, emails, etc. still won't come through.
 
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elliots11 said:
I have a good friend who is the absolute worst text messager since he got an iPhone. We've had numerous conversations about it, he doesn't stop. It's like he's a reasonably smart guy, but an idiot when it comes to social norms of texting. There's 2 things he does that drives me nuts:

1. He texts me early on the weekends, waking me up and throwing off my sleep schedule (High Priority). These messages are never important, and if they ever were, well it's TS for him.

2. He sends 3-4 texts in a row to complete a single thought, that should really only take 1 text resulting in multiple dings on my iPhone, often when I have something important going on, like trying to turn left across a busy street in my car.

Do Not Disturb
- I know I can turn on Do Not Disturb, and I would schedule it, but I can't schedule Do Not Disturb to differentiate the weekends from the week, and I don't want calls blocked in the morning on weekdays.
- I'm not going to remember to turn on Do Not Disturb for everybody every weekend manually, plus I work in an industry where I'll get emergency calls from numbers I don't know that I need to take.
- I like to sleep in on the weekends, I just do, not interested in hearing about whether that's good or bad. Plus I like to stay out late.
- I just need to block one dude, some of the time.

3rd Party Apps
Before I block his texts completely, I'd like to see if there's an app that can help Do Not Disturb work on specific contacts or vary a bit based on a schedule or both.

All of the apps I've seen in the app store, even the $10 one, do not set it up to work on a schedule. If anyone knows of one I'd buy it.

So I'm looking for an app or apps that:
1. Allows me to control my Do Not Disturb list by specific contacts on a schedule. I don't want to block everybody, I don't even want to block a single person all of the time; What I want is to block one person some of the time.
I want to silence text alerts from 1 single contact for the hours of 4AM - 11:30 AM on the weekends. Is there an app for that?

2. Possibly a separate app that reduces repeat notifications of text messages from a single number, lower priority.
Click to expand...

long and short answer: no.
Apple doesn't allow 3rd party apps that control.
 
I had a situation just like the one reported here. Reaching out to my friend explaining how his texting habits impacted me, was all it took to resolve the issue. Out of respect he was quick to modify his habits. Turns out until I called it to his attention, he failed to realize it was inappropriate. Once his habits changed other friends also thanked him for the improvement. Everyone wins. Easy.
 
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Hi,

There is no App for blocking a particular text message or you can keep the mobile in silent mode to avoid the disturbance.
 
Sounds like either he's a ****** friend or you're a ****** communicator. Can't believe you're going to all of this trouble.

I love that setting his conversation with you on DND manually is too much work for you but posting here, getting advice from others, downloading other apps, etc. isn't. Incredible.
 
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Multiple messages is bad? Whoops. Oh well. (If this were iMessage, each one of those clauses would be separate messages.)
 
I have alerts from my texts and emails silenced, I treat the two identically. If somebody needs me immediately they call me. In these days of interconnectedness, you have to be responsible for your own device and can't assume someone knows a "social norm" about texting.
 
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elliots11 said:
2. He sends 3-4 texts in a row to complete a single thought, that should really only take 1 text resulting in multiple dings on my iPhone, often when I have something important going on, like trying to turn left across a busy street in my car.
Click to expand...

not sure what is the problem here - if im driving the phone can ring, peep and vibrate or even dancing on the seat, im not going to watch it until my car is stopped. so what exactly is the problem? is the problem that you cant be without your phone while driving or a friend is sending messages??
 
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maxsix said:
I had a situation just like the one reported here. Reaching out to my friend explaining how his texting habits impacted me, was all it took to resolve the issue. Out of respect he was quick to modify his habits. Turns out until I called it to his attention, he failed to realize it was inappropriate. Once his habits changed other friends also thanked him for the improvement. Everyone wins. Easy.
Click to expand...

Agreed. If it really is a friend, when you have time, sit down and discuss it with him. Most reasonable people will understand.
 
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willmtaylor said:
Sounds like either he's a sh!tty friend or you're a sh!tty communicator. Can't believe you're going to all of this trouble.

I love that setting his conversation with you on DND manually is too much work for you but posting here, getting advice from others, downloading other apps, etc. isn't. Incredible.
Click to expand...
I don't think it's too much work for him so much as an awkard conversation to have. There may be aspects to his friend's personality that just make it an undesirable route to take. Not everything can be logically and unemotionally discussed with everyone. Some people are incredibly twitchy.

In my experience it is simply socially risky to ask a friend to alter any communication habits whatsoever. You risk triggering a defensive meltdown.

I was shunned by my husband's aunt and one other friend in the 1990's when I politely and diplomatically asked them to remove me from those chain letter forwards that were so popular then and clogged my inbox worse than porn spammers and fraud rings ever even tried to. The friend went a step further than shunning and started talking to mutual friends about what a cold witch I was for rejecting her. It was completely illogical to think I was rejecting her friendship just because I asked her to remove me from her forwards list since I was getting so many duplicates of the same chain letters from others. In fact I told her I always loved hearing from her directly and treasured our more personal emails. But that is how my request was taken.

More recently I had a friend who was spamming me day and night with her drama. Once she woke me with a text from Europe at 2 a.m. because she had a bad dream! She fully expected me and my kid to be available to her and her kid anytime they were experiencing some emotional crisis, which was often. She flew into a fury when we would not drop everything to take their texts or calls. I tried having numerous heart to heart talks about setting parameters we could both live with. It didn't work.

I damn near switched to Android when I found out how limited my options are through iOS and AT&T to deal with everything this drama llama was throwing at me. Eventually I had to eject this person from my life and that process was made more complicated because I didn't have the technological options open to me that I would have liked to have.
 
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Kobbr said:
You can enable do not disturb on his contact only in the messages app.
Click to expand...

Yup. I mentioned that earlier:
willmtaylor said:
Sounds like either he's a ****** friend or you're a ****** communicator. Can't believe you're going to all of this trouble.

I love that setting his conversation with you on DND manually is too much work for you but posting here, getting advice from others, downloading other apps, etc. isn't. Incredible.
Click to expand...
 
I'd just leave his conversation on DND.

I agree about the consecutive texts in a matter of seconds. At least the iPhone knows it's from the same person so it doesn't show on the lock screen as separate notifications, just Contact Name (n). I wish Facebook Messenger/push notifications for other messaging apps would be like that too, as I sometimes end up with a lock screen just full of Facebook Messenger notifications from the same person.
 
Thanks for the comments, there have been some good answers in here. It was a pretty basic solution that I just didn't think of, which was turning off his text tone & vibrate or muting the text conversation which I'd thought was a group text thing.

To those who've said I should talk to him: I have, other mutual friends have, he just is the way he is. Does this make him a ****** friend? No. ****** friends steal from you, they create drama, they cause you harm, etc. This guy just has an annoying quirk and its one that technology can solve, and has.

So thanks to those that chimed in with helpful answers.
 
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