It’s not uncommon for nosy onlookers to peer at your phone screen from over your shoulder as you enjoy a text message-based conversation with one of your friends or loved ones. Albeit creepy, such is life.
Apple’s iOS mobile operating system takes this fact into account, offering a handy feature in the Messages app’s notification settings that can hide message contents from your Lock Screen’s notification banners under various circumstances. But if that’s still not enough privacy for you, then a newly released jailbreak tweak dubbed LeaveMeOff Pro by iOS developer Plat-Ykor could be worth checking out.
LeaveMeOff Pro takes a different approach to notification privacy. Rather than merely displaying the word “iMessage” under the sender’s name in the notification banner to mask the notification’s contents, this tweak lets you hide the message contents entirely or change the behavior of your iPhone when receiving certain notifications.
LeaveMeOff Pro supports three different modes, including:
- Keep The Screen Off: Prevents the iPhone’s display from waking when you receive a new notification.
- Stealth: Enter a contact’s name and the iPhone’s display won’t wake when that person messages you, but your iPhone will vibrate 3 times to let you know that person has messaged you.
- Anonymous: Enter a contact’s name and the iPhone’s display won’t wake when that person messages you, but it will conceal that person’s name and message contents from the missed notification banner.
The options above appear in a dedicated preference pane in the Settings app post-installation and can be toggled by the end user:
This should be fairly self-explanatory, but the options above vary greatly from iOS’ native notification-hiding feature. What’s more is the developer of LeaveMeOff Pro offers three different ways of preventing onlookers from peering on your notifications, so you can use the one that fits your needs.
We find that keeping the screen off is useful when your iPhone will be sitting unattended on a table, as this prevents the iPhone from attracted unwanted attention when you receive a notification. The Stealth option is handy if you want to know if a certain person has texted you without taking your iPhone out of your pocket. And lastly, the Anonymous option will be useful if you want to prevent over-the-shoulder lookers from reading notification details from your Lock Screen, as it’s more comprehensive than Apple’s own privacy feature.
One thing worth noting is that when you hide the notification’s contents from your Lock Screen, you can swipe on the banner to display the View button. Tapping this button displays the contents of the notification, like so:
LeaveMeOff Pro offers great options for keeping your notifications out of the public’s eye. Those interested in trying LeaveMeOff Pro can purchase the tweak for $0.90 from the Packix repository. Furthermore, it supports jailbroken iOS 13 and 14 devices.
Do you have problems with people peering at your notifications in public? Let us know in the comments section down below.
