Read receipts aren't everyone's favorite thing — after all, they can let friends know we've read a message when we would rather pretend we hadn't — but they're handy for keeping up with online conversations. And Facebook Messenger has read receipts, if you know where to look.
Read receipts on Facebook.com and Messenger.com
The best way to tell whether a message has been read is to log onto Facebook with a web browser (or access the Facebook Messenger website by going to messenger.com instead of facebook.com). Clicking on the Messenger icon reveals a list of the people you've communicated with. Selecting a person pop-ups a small window over your Facebook timeline.
If a friend has read your message, you'll see a miniature version of their profile picture. If they haven't, you'll see a gray icon with a white checkmark indicating the message has been delivered, but not yet read. You may also see a white circle, which means the message is sending, or a white circle with a gray checkmark, which means the message has been sent, but not yet delivered.
If you mouse over the miniature version of their profile picture, a popup will show "Seen by [Name of person]" along with the date and time it was seen. The website version of Messenger is the only way to see the time and date the message was read.
Read receipts on the Facebook Messenger app
Messenger uses small, circular icons that show up in the lower right the message window. If a friend has read your message, you'll see a miniature version of their profile picture. If they haven't, you'll see a blue icon with a white checkmark indicating the message has been delivered, but not yet read. You may also see a white circle, which means the message is sending, or a white circle with a blue checkmark, which means the message has been sent, but not yet delivered.
With the app, you can't see the time and date stamp. Tapping the icon or message will just reveal the status as "Seen."
You won't always be able to see if a message has been read
A message being unread doesn't necessarily mean the recipient hasn't read it. Message notifications — which your friend may have pop up on their desktop or smartphone — let friends read your messages without read receipts. You'll only get a read receipt when your friend opens Messenger to read your message or views Messenger messages through Facebook.
Updated on 3/23/2022 with new instructions for revealing read receipts.
[Image credit: Facebook Messenger app on iPhone via Techlicious/Smartmockups, screenshots via Techlicious and Facebook]
Elizabeth Harper is a writer and editor with more than a decade of experience covering consumer technology and entertainment. In addition to writing for Techlicious, she's Editorial Director of Blizzard Watch and is published on sites all over the web including Time, CBS, Engadget, The Daily Dot and DealNews.
facebook
From jean penny on January 20, 2019 :: 4:12 pm
I would like to go on Facebook
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There is nothing good about
From Jeremey Hustman on March 03, 2021 :: 5:26 pm
There is nothing good about Facebook. It’s a liberal shithole. They remove everything they don’t agree with, which is most of it. Smart people don’t use Facebook any more.
Reply
Nothing good about insurrection
From Rome on July 07, 2021 :: 9:14 pm
What do dumb people that still listen to old petulant baby wannabe dictators use?
Reply
hypocrite
From Hajiazula on November 11, 2021 :: 1:14 pm
“wannabe dictators” says the man who we are left to presume thinks that biden, an arms dealing peado who has been owned by china, a literal fascist dictatorship since the early 2000’s is a good “leader”?
The same man who brands other people racist, yet bidens name and money alone pushed a bill in 1994 that allowed america to arrest and imprison minorities en masse without probable cause.
You can like who you want, you can agree with whatever policies you want, but you cannot be a complete hypocrite about it. Either you have literally zero knowledge about the things you run your mouth over or you know the facts and choose to ignore them to inflate your own ego
I completely agree with what
From Janis on April 17, 2022 :: 11:59 am
I completely agree with what you wrote. I commented on a dear friends post and Facebook put me into Facebook prison for 3 days. She had written that her illness was getting worse and that a cloud was waiting for her. I replied back “you’re not going anywhere right now so you better not say that. I’ll kick your butt if you do lolol” exactly like that. I went to FB prison for bullying. OMG really? Yep. I reported so many accounts that had very sexual content as their profile pics and FB said that “it didn’t go against their standards”. The day this happened I broke up with Facebook for forever! I HATE FACEBOOK!!
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Software security
From Paul bloomfield on June 30, 2022 :: 12:50 pm
I think you will find that software security picks up certain words, you’ll be able to tell how the wordings, English grammar with the reply, if you find it’s not common English, in a way like layman’s terms, you have a case to answer