With the new iOS 16 update, Apple introduced a new spam report setting that has caused lots of confusion and issues for the mobile users of the new iOS update. The SMS messaging issue revolves around users accidentally reported a new text message that they receive as junk, which can be confusing as these messages then disappear from your stock Messages or iMessage app on your device – with no clear method to retrieve these lost messages.
The following article will give guidance and advice to users of Apple’s new iOS 16 update on supported iPhone models that are experiencing this iMessage issue.
Why do iOS 16 users often accidentally report text messages as junk on iPhone?
The reason this is such an easy problem to accidentally make in the new iOS software update – which hopefully Apple will fix soon – is because every time you select to delete a text message on the Messages app, a popup automatically appears that prompts users with the spam report option, of which the report junk option is listed as primary at the top of the list.
This makes it far too easy for users to unintentionally delete an SMS message they no longer want to appear in their Messages application, but then mistakenly add the sender of the message to their junk folder which soon enough might effectively block the contact as a spam user.
How can you disable the new report junk options in iOS Messages?
Unfortunately, as of this moment Apple has not implemented a solution that allows users to find and manually disable the popup from appearing to avoid such issues to happen.
Hopefully, after all the negative feedback, Apple will add this option in the settings later, as iOS 16 is still relatively new. Although, the latest iOS 16 iteration, iOS 16.1 features a more user-friendly popup which instead provides a Delete option, rather than previously where it just had Report Junk. The layout of the button is also a bit easier to understand and use, which makes it simpler for users to not accidentally click the Report Junk button.
How to make sure you don’t click Report Junk?
To make sure you don’t accidentally click the Report Junk button when deleting an iMessage on iPhone via the default Messages app, rather than clicking the button corresponding with don’t report that appears at the bottom of the iPhone’s screen, click the area above the popup, as this will close the popup all together which will dismiss it and reduce further accidentally input. This is currently the easiest way to avoid accidental spam reports, by ignoring the Report Junk popup completely and not interacting with any of its elements.
How to undo report junk on iPhone when it happens?
Unfortunately, the feature to undo report junk or unreport the text message isn’t available yet either. However, hopefully Apple will introduce it later.
But you shouldn’t worry if you accidentally report a message as spam anyway, as you will continue to receive messages from the same phone number that you have accidentally reported as spam. Eventually, if you report the same number enough times however, you might accidentally block the number, however when that happens, you can unblock them via your iPhone’s settings.
This is a very annoying introduction to iOS 16, but based off of iOS 16.1, it appears Apple is responding to feedback from the community, so hopefully soon they can improve it even more.
