First, let me say that I despise it. Anyone caught doing this should be executed in the most inhumane manner possible.

The question, though, is how to respond to the sender without having your response go out to everyone else.

My understanding is that if I respond directly to the text, it'll go out to everyone. However, if I go to the sender in my phone contacts list and tap on "Message", then it'll go to just the sender and not everyone else. Is this correct?

Correct, respond directly to them and not within the group chat. They’ll be the only ones that see the message you send.

I don't like texting in general (the exception being for short real-time comms and updates), greatly preferring face to face conversations, phone calls, or emails [letters too, but who sends those anymore? ]. But because so many family and friends do include me in their group texts, I participate.

Yes, you should be able to single out a single person in your Contact List, and your conversation should go to them. Side note: Zoom Meeting video conference calls allow this same feature, with the option of Group Chat messages or sending an individual in the Group an Instant Message (IM)/ Direct Message (DM).

I recently participated in a family group text that went fairly late into the night, and various members started to drop out to hit the bed. One member suddenly texted me individually, and rightly realized and pointed out that we should switch to an individual text conversation so that we didn't continue to disturb the other members of the Group Chat trying to sleep while their phones were dinging.

I will say that a few years ago I ran into a situation where some of the group chats I was in had some members appearing in the conversation individually, rather than as part of the Group Chat. It had something to do with whether my phone or theirs was set up for SMS or MMS, and a menu setting under this, so I'd be cautious of this producing a text that you didn't want going to the Group.

Also hate group texts except for one time. Ran my Father to the hospital and rather than call both of my brothers, my Dad's sister and my daughter, I sent a group text.

Any other time, I will respond to the individual in a separate text and tell them to drop me from the group.

Thanks guys.

My wife's best friend sometimes includes me in a group text usually something like "Happy Thanksgiving". Without fail when I reply my thanks everyone else gets upset and replies "Who is this? How did you get my number?" Wife's friend is a nice lady so I try not to pick on her dumb friends.

^^^
Yeah, I've had a few unknown phone #s appear in Group Chats and it can get a little confusing or even awkward. Gotta be careful of what you say with unknown #s in group chats.

I use group texts each month to notify members of my shooting group of an upcoming coffee and eats meeting, where and when.

It works well for the intended purpose.

The smarter ones on the list answer me one to one instead of answering the group text.

Signal works well for this. I leave my Bible study muted, as they can get going.

You can go into your contacts and block the originator. That will stop you from getting interrupted again. You just need to remember to unblock them later. I despise group texts. There should be an opt out anytime feature.

quote:

Gotta be careful of what you say with unknown #s in group chats.

Or do you? A one well worded response and BAM! off the list you are.

quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:

quote:

Gotta be careful of what you say with unknown #s in group chats.

Or do you? A one well worded response and BAM! off the list you are.

R U purdy?

All you have to do is reply:

“Please take me off this group text”

Or mute the conversation

My family is notorious for trying to blow up my phone this way.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
All you have to do is reply:

“Please take me off this group text”

Or mute the conversation

My family is notorious for trying to blow up my phone this way.

Same with my family. They know I despise group texts but I somehow still get included. The latest one is eight people with five of them of the female persuasion who just love love love having to send the last emoji in a conversation! We have two new grandkids so the girls do photo dumps of the kids which results in a explosion of comments or just emojis for the next several hours. I silence the conversation so my phone isn't blowing up. Then all of a sudden I'll look at my phone and I have thirteen new messages all on this one group text. I can still see the pics of the grandkids without wanting to smash and burn my cell phone!

When out on Assignment on Fires my IMT Logs Chief when we use group Texts for our section breaks down texts as "Group Reply" or "Direct Reply" so like "Hey guys what restaurant are we thinking" is a group reply and we hash it out but a "Meeting has been moved up to 1300" goes Direct and only he gets the 10 reply messages.

Trick is teaching people that concept.

One thing I “ALWAYS” do in a group chat is end every reply with {GROUP}.

It’s saved me more than once to notice that I had almost replied in a cursed group chat instead of the individual text that I wanted to send.