How to turn off read receipts in X (Twitter) DMs

Open a DM on X and the sender knows. Read receipts have been in the product since 2016, they are on by default, and most people never touch the setting because they never went looking for it. If you have ever left a message unopened for a day because you were not ready to answer it, you have already been managing around a feature you could just switch off.

Where the read receipts setting lives

The setting is called Show read receipts, and X has moved it at least once, so check both places.

The long-standing path, still documented in X's own help pages:

1. Tap your profile icon, then Settings and privacy.
2. Tap Privacy and safety.
3. Under Direct Messages, toggle Show read receipts off.

On the web it is the same destination by a different route: the More menu, then Privacy and safety, then Direct Messages.

Newer builds of the mobile app surface it under a dedicated messaging section instead, as Settings, then Messages and story replies, then Show read receipts. If the toggle is not where you expect, that is where it went.

Turning it off cuts both ways

This is the part people miss. Show read receipts is reciprocal. Switch it off and you stop broadcasting when you read a message, but you also stop seeing when anyone reads yours. There is no setting that hides your receipts while keeping everyone else's visible.

Whether that is a good trade depends on what you use DMs for. If you are running conversations that matter (pitches, deals, collaborations), the signal that someone opened your message and did not reply is genuinely useful, and losing it hurts. If DMs are mostly inbound and you want the freedom to read on your own schedule, the trade is easy.

Does anything else send a read receipt?

Worth knowing: read receipts are not limited to the iOS and Android apps. Opening a DM on mobile web sends one too. Switching devices is not a workaround.

The inbox list is the practical exception. The conversation list shows the first line of the newest message before you open anything, so a short message is often readable from the list without ever entering the thread. It is not a real privacy feature, just a side effect of the layout, and it stops working the moment the message is longer than the preview.

If you want a reliable answer rather than a trick, the toggle is the answer.

Read receipts are a DM setting, not an analytics setting

One clarification, since the two get mixed up. Read receipts say nothing about your posts. They cover private messages only. The number of people who saw a post is the view count, a completely separate thing, and no setting on either side changes who can see it.

If it is post performance you are actually after, that lives in analytics, not DM privacy. The same goes for the other question people bring to their settings screen: X has no toggle that tells you who is not following you back, because it is not a setting, it is a comparison you have to run yourself.

Where SpacerrX stands on this

For the avoidance of doubt, since people find this page looking for a tool: SpacerrX does not read, send, or touch your DMs at all. It works on the public side of your account, meaning your posts, replies, trends, and who does and doesn't follow you back. Read receipts are between you and X, and the toggle above is the whole of it.