HushHow to Hide Messages From Your Lock Screen
The lock screen shows things to people who can't unlock your phone. That's its job — and its flaw. Here's how to keep names and message text off it, on iPhone and Android.
On iPhone, set Settings → Notifications → Show Previews to When Unlocked — or Never — and message text stops appearing while the phone is locked. On Android, turn on the option that hides sensitive content from lock-screen notifications. Both systems let you override the choice app by app. Those settings hide the words. Hush's stealth notifications go further: they never put a name or a message on the glass in the first place.
iPhone: keep previews off the lock screen
iOS treats the preview — the sender and the message text — as separate from the notification itself, which is exactly the separation you want.
- Show Previews, globally: Settings → Notifications → Show Previews. When Unlocked shows message text only after Face ID or Touch ID recognizes you — glanceable for you, blank for everyone else. Never takes the text out of notifications entirely.
- Per-app overrides: Settings → Notifications → choose an app → Show Previews. Leave previews on for the harmless apps and set every messaging app to Never — the global setting is only the default your overrides sit on.
- Choose where alerts appear, per app: the same per-app screen lets you untick the Lock Screen as a location, keeping alerts in Notification Center or as banners only. Messages still arrive — they just wait until the phone is open to be seen.
- Scheduled Summary: batches notifications from apps you pick into digests delivered at times you set. Fewer alerts land on the glass at unpredictable moments — which matters when the phone spends its day face-up on a desk.
- Hide Alerts, per conversation: in Messages, swipe left on a thread and tap the bell. That one conversation stops announcing itself entirely — the closest iOS gets to hiding messages from one specific person.
On Face ID iPhones, When Unlocked is usually the factory default — but "usually" is doing real work in that sentence. Check it rather than trust it; the setting takes ten seconds to confirm and covers every app at once.
Android: hide sensitive content on the lock screen
Android words things differently from one manufacturer to the next, but the same three controls exist almost everywhere.
- Hide sensitive content: under Settings → Notifications, find the lock-screen section and choose to show notifications but hide their content. Alerts still arrive; the preview is replaced with a generic line such as "Content hidden". On some phones the switch sits under Lock screen settings instead — same control, different address.
- Per-channel settings: long-press any notification to open that app's notification channels. Set a messaging app's channels to Silent and they stop lighting the screen or making a sound — messages simply wait in the shade until you look.
- Silent delivery: silent notifications skip the heads-up banner, and on many phones skip waking the lock screen at all — the quietest an alert can get while still existing. Combine it with hidden content and a messaging app becomes a quiet row in the shade: there if you pull down, absent if you don't.
Samsung layers its own lock-screen notification styles on top, and every manufacturer shuffles the menus a little. If Android is your platform, our guide to secret messaging apps for Android goes deeper.
The switches inside the messaging apps
Most messengers ship their own preview controls, stacked on top of the system settings. Worth setting both, since either one can leak alone: the system decides what notifications may show, the app decides what it hands over in the first place.
- WhatsApp: the "Show preview" option in its notification settings takes message text out of notifications on iOS and Android alike — though the sender's name still shows.
- Signal: lets you choose what its notifications display — name and message, name only, or nothing at all.
- Telegram and most others: some version of the same toggle, each living in its own settings screen, each set separately.
Notice what this is turning into: not one setting but a checklist, with one entry per app, re-checked every time you install something new.
What hidden previews still show
Turn every preview off and the lock screen still testifies. It names the app. On plenty of setups it still names the sender. And it stamps the exact minute. "2 notifications" with an app's name and a time attached tells a reader who — or at least where — and when. Only the words are missing.
It's also maintenance. New apps arrive with previews on. A major OS update, or a restore onto a new phone, can quietly undo choices you made a year ago. Miss one toggle on one app and the leak is back. And underneath all of it sits the part no setting fixes: even a perfectly blanked notification announces that this app, at this moment, had something to say to you.
How Hush notifies with nothing to read
Hush's notifications are stealth by default — not a toggle to hunt down, the only way the app behaves. No sender name, no message text, on the lock screen or anywhere else. The notification does its one honest job: it tells you something arrived without telling anyone else anything.
There's nothing behind the notification to find, either. Hush's home screen is a numeric keypad — no conversation list, no names, no badges. Each contact opens only with the 6-digit code you chose for that person, and leaving the chat hides it again. "Hand someone your phone. They can't prove you talk to anyone."
- Install Hush — free on iOS and Android. Sign-up asks for a username, not a phone number or email.
- Add your contact by username, or send them an invite link. Requests must be accepted, so nobody appears uninvited.
- Choose a 6-digit code for that contact. The chat exists only behind it — your code, not a shared one; theirs can be different.
- Let notifications arrive. They're stealthed from the first message: nothing to configure, nothing to re-check after an update.
- Have the other person set up the same way. The invite link gets them there, and they pick their own code for you.
And if someone ever tries digits on that keypad, a wrong code shows nothing — no error, no hint. The attempt is logged to Security Alerts for 48 hours, so you find out. They never do.
- A notification still arrives. Hush blanks its contents — it doesn't pretend nothing happened. Someone watching the screen sees that an alert exists; they just can't read anything from it.
- Hush can't fix other apps' notifications. Hiding previews in iOS and Android is per-app upkeep, and Hush removes that chore only for the conversations that live inside it.
- A forgotten code is unrecoverable — by design. No reset flow means nobody can talk their way into your chats. It also means nobody can rescue yours.
Common questions
How do I hide just the sender's name?
On iPhone, Show Previews set to When Unlocked hides the message text until Face ID sees you — but the notification can still show who it's from. Fully hiding the sender means setting previews to Never, which collapses notifications to the app's name and a count. Android's hide-sensitive-content option behaves much the same: app visible, details hidden.
Will I still know I got a message?
Yes. Hiding previews doesn't suppress notifications — you still get the alert, the app name and the count. What you lose is the ability to read the message from across the room. So does everyone else, which is the point.
Do Hush notifications ever show the message?
No. Stealth is the default and only behavior: no sender name, no content, on the lock screen or in the notification shade. Reading the actual message takes the one thing a bystander doesn't have — that contact's 6-digit code.
What about the Apple Watch and lock-screen widgets?
Mirrored notifications generally follow your phone's preview settings, but a watch is a second screen with its own lock state. After changing anything, send yourself a test message and check what the watch actually displays — and do the same for any lock-screen widget that surfaces notifications.
