You may see a crescent moon (gray or blue) symbol next to your contacts in Messages. We received some questions from our readers regarding these icons. Our readers wanted to know what did that mean? Why there were some messages had this icon, while some did not. And also how could someone remove it?
See also: Message Alerts Not Working?
Moon Symbol in the Status Bar
If you see a moon symbol in the status bar (top bar) of your iPad or iPhone, that means that Do Not Disturb is enabled. Do Not Disturb lets you silence calls, notifications, and alerts. Enabling this will stop vibrations, sounds etc.
To limit interruptions with “Do Not Disturb”, go to Settings > Do Not Disturb.
Moon Symbol in Messages
iOS lets your mute individual threads in Messages. Moon means that you have silenced the conversation by selecting the ”Do Not Disturb” (iOS 10 and earlier) or “Hide Alerts” option. It means that you have selected to mute notifications and alerts about new messages from that particular contact.
When this option is enabled, you will not get notifications (your device will not vibrate, will not make any sound etc) but you will still receive texts.
You can unmute text messages (this will get rid of the moon icons) by going to the text conversations > then tap Details (i) >
then toggle off “Do Not Disturb” (iOS 10 and earlier). If you are running iOS 11, then toggle off “Hide Alerts”.
You may see Blue or Gray icons.
Blue vs Gray Crescent Moon
As I stated above, you may see blue or gray crescent moon icons. They mean different things:
This means that you have a new, unread message. This will turn gray after you read it.
This means that texts are read / opened.
See also:
How to Mute Text Notifications For Individual or Group Message Conversations
Stacy Young says
February 15, 2018 at 12:17 amThank you helped a lot!
Josephine says
May 14, 2018 at 12:08 amHi. I only have one contact that comes up with the blue grey moon symbol. Unsure why ??
Thank you
Jo
Dw says
August 30, 2018 at 12:57 amI think it’s because that number is the only one you have on do not disturb.
Ali says
May 25, 2018 at 8:22 amWhat does it mean If I sent a message to a contact and see a gray Cresent?
Jeffrey Tran says
June 1, 2018 at 8:14 pmThey have read or seen ur Message
nikki says
July 15, 2018 at 1:24 amit means you’ve read the message they sent you.
Dane says
July 14, 2018 at 2:35 amI found my husband on Skype long story anyways I have his number in my contacts and whe I send a message to the number in contacts it’s normal but when I send it to the other not even logged into Skype it sends but no text back.Does this mean that he has two numbers confused???
Concerned. Citizen says
October 20, 2018 at 5:26 pmSome of the shit you people come up with And no one gives a fuck about her husband on Skype ?Go ask your shrink
Donte says
December 31, 2018 at 12:50 pmThat wasn’t nice at all. But Maybe u should go to a Skype platform
Helen says
August 9, 2018 at 7:14 pmHi there, I sent a text to a contact and saw the grey moon appear. I don’t remember turning on the alerts as it’s not happening for anyone else. Is it possible that they put my text into a Do Not Disturb on their phone? We are both on iPhone. Thanks, Helen
Robert I Ross says
August 15, 2018 at 3:45 pmBut how did the “gray moon” get turned on for a text message in the first place? I didn’t put it on.
Thanks.
John says
October 3, 2018 at 4:57 pmYou probably did it accidentally. This happens to me on my mac using Messages: if you accidentally drag a contact in messages slightly to the right, a moon icon appears. If that gets clicked while you drag, then you have enabled Do Not Disturb for that contact. It can happen if you click on a contact and hold the mouse button too long: you then effectively click and drag on that contact and enabled DND. To fix that just drag the contact to the right a little to expose the moon icon and click it to turn DND off for that contact.
Robert F says
November 26, 2018 at 1:18 amNice! That’s the real problem my 85-year old in-law was having
Teresa says
December 27, 2018 at 7:08 amI put on the do not disturb and I still get text messages. How do I fix that
Kas says
May 7, 2019 at 2:26 pmYou would have to go to your contacts and BLOCK the particular person from which you do not want to receive texts. Do not disturb means that when you get a text from a person you do not want to be distrurbed. That means your phone won’t buzz, vibrate, ring, do cartwheels, or anything else. It will just sit there quietly and not let you know you recieved a text from that person.