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You are here: Home / Guides / Crescent Moon Icon in Messages: What Does It Mean?

Crescent Moon Icon in Messages: What Does It Mean?

Last updated on October 9, 2017 By Serhat Kurt 22 Comments

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.

Do Not Disturb is turned on

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) >

details button

then toggle off “Do Not Disturb” (iOS 10 and earlier). If you are running iOS 11, then  toggle off “Hide Alerts”.

mute messages

 

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:

blue moon icon in text messages

This means that you have a new, unread message. This will turn gray after you read it.

gray moon icon in text messages

This means that texts are read / opened.

See also:

How to Mute Text Notifications For Individual or Group Message Conversations

Filed Under: Guides Tagged With: Do Not Disturb

Comments

  1. Lyn says

    December 4, 2019 at 8:48 am

    How do you retrieve messages after the grey moon has been turned off

    Reply
    • Michael Kyle says

      May 11, 2020 at 11:37 pm

      The same as if it’s on (Grey or blue)except it won’t notify you At that moment but either way you get the message. I “do not disturb” mostly in group text. My phone blows up with every comment or personally if someone calls or Has a tendency to call or text late I don’t want to hear the notification

      Reply
  2. Teresa says

    December 27, 2018 at 7:08 am

    I put on the do not disturb and I still get text messages. How do I fix that

    Reply
    • Kas says

      May 7, 2019 at 2:26 pm

      You 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.

      Reply
      • Mike says

        May 11, 2020 at 11:29 pm

        I believe if I put my phone on “do not disturb” anyone that calls me goes to voice mail. However if the know (let’s say they know you are at work and you can’t take calls that you use do not disturb. If the caller calls immediately right away the call will go through.

        Reply
    • Michael Kyle says

      May 11, 2020 at 11:31 pm

      Block that contact. They won’t know and neither will you

      Reply
  3. Robert I Ross says

    August 15, 2018 at 3:45 pm

    But how did the “gray moon” get turned on for a text message in the first place? I didn’t put it on.

    Thanks.

    Reply
    • John says

      October 3, 2018 at 4:57 pm

      You 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.

      Reply
      • Robert F says

        November 26, 2018 at 1:18 am

        Nice! That’s the real problem my 85-year old in-law was having

        Reply
      • Maw maw 2 5 says

        September 26, 2019 at 4:00 pm

        You are so nice to take the time to explain to us. Thank you so very very much.

        I’m older. Not OLD tho !! lol
        Thanks again to

        Reply
      • deb c says

        June 15, 2020 at 2:15 pm

        thank you for the help , worked perfectly …

        Reply
  4. Helen says

    August 9, 2018 at 7:14 pm

    Hi 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

    Reply
  5. Dane says

    July 14, 2018 at 2:35 am

    I 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???

    Reply
    • Donte says

      December 31, 2018 at 12:50 pm

      That wasn’t nice at all. But Maybe u should go to a Skype platform

      Reply
      • Carollyne says

        July 23, 2019 at 11:58 pm

        Very good that you would defend someone trying to explain. Concerned. Citizen has no understanding and reacts through ignorance.

        Reply
    • Executioner says

      July 22, 2019 at 4:48 pm

      You need an attitude adjustment.

      Reply
  6. Ali says

    May 25, 2018 at 8:22 am

    What does it mean If I sent a message to a contact and see a gray Cresent?

    Reply
    • Jeffrey Tran says

      June 1, 2018 at 8:14 pm

      They have read or seen ur Message

      Reply
    • nikki says

      July 15, 2018 at 1:24 am

      it means you’ve read the message they sent you.

      Reply
  7. Josephine says

    May 14, 2018 at 12:08 am

    Hi. I only have one contact that comes up with the blue grey moon symbol. Unsure why ??
    Thank you
    Jo

    Reply
    • Dw says

      August 30, 2018 at 12:57 am

      I think it’s because that number is the only one you have on do not disturb.

      Reply
  8. Stacy Young says

    February 15, 2018 at 12:17 am

    Thank you helped a lot!

    Reply

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