This guide will show Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge owners how to disable text message previews, popups and lock screen information to keep privacy under control. Since the phone has been on the market for a few months, we’ve been getting a lot of questions, and one of them is about text message pop-ups that show sensitive information.
With the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, Samsung has redesigned its entire user interface on top of Android 5.0 Lollipop and with that comes a lot of changes. One of them is a neat popup preview of text messages and a preview of the message on the lock screen, and some users want to hide this sensitive information.
On Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge using the stock text messaging app, users will receive a pop-up notification sharing a preview of the message in the notification bar row at the top of the screen and even on the lock screen. And while this is convenient for many, some may want to hide or disable it from showing. Read on to find out how.
The default text messaging app built into these phones is a great one, but there are numerous 3rd party text apps for Android with lots of settings to fix this problem. My personal recommendation would be to try one of the ones outlined below, Textra is one of my favourites.
However, if you want to continue using the pre-installed one, below are some instructions for hiding some of these notifications, pop-ups, and information on the lock screen to keep things more private.
Disable Popup
The most useful feature, which is also quite intrusive, is the popup that appears on an incoming text message on the Galaxy S6. This popup shows who the message is from and a preview of the conversation that could get users in trouble at work or share sensitive information. This is the biggest question we’ve been asked about, and here’s how to disable it.
Open the default “” app and tap the more button on the top right, then select settings > notifications > and turn off “” to get rid of it. It’s that easy and it’s shown in the picture below.
This completely removes the popup that users see when receiving an incoming text message. This removes the popup, but the messages will still show in the notification bar at the top of the page (swiping and showing a preview) and on your lock screen, so let’s disable those as well.
Lock Screen Text Preview
In the past, we’ve detailed how to enable message previews on the lock screen, but this is about disabling them. If Galaxy S6 owners don’t want an incoming message and its content to display on the lock screen, here’s how to disable it.
Go to settings by tapping the gear-shaped icon at the top of the notification bar or in the apps menu. Then select “ and scroll down to ““. Select here to hide the content. This will still show notifications from messages, Facebook, Gmail, and more on the lock screen, but not the content. Select Don’t show notifications to remove everything.
Finally, and as we mentioned above, users can also try using a different text messaging app. My favorite is Textra which has options to show contact info in notifications or leave it blank, or even hide message content in all incoming notifications. This way you will know you have a new notification, but you can choose what to show.
There are countless 3rd party text messaging apps with tons of privacy controls on the Google Play Store. ChompSMS is another popular one, but the steps above will fix these issues for those who prefer to stick with the stock app available on the Galaxy S6. Click the link above for more tips and tricks.
