How to turn off chat on Facebook on iPhone

I just got a Samsung Galaxy S8+ from my awesome brother in law, for testing and development work. But, when I charged it up and it turned on automatically, it was still set up with all his data, his PIN, etc, so I was locked out. I could have sent him a text to ask him for the PIN info, but not only was it 6am, it would also be a missed opportunity to see if I could factory reset the S8+ without the lock screen PIN.

Unfortunately, to factory reset an Android device, you need to boot to the system menu, but booting to the system menu requires the device to be powered off. But, to power off, you need the lock screen PIN. If I had the PIN, I probably wouldn't need to factory reset it!

How to turn off a Samsung Galaxy without the PIN:

1. Hold the volume down + power buttons for 10-15 seconds, until you feel it vibrate. I held it a lot longer than necessary, that's ok. The galaxy will then show a system menu with instructions how to use the menu. For my phone, it was to use volume up down to change menu selections, and the Bixsby key to select.

2. Use the volume down button to move the selection down to the "Power down" choice.

3. Use the Bixsby button to select/confirm "Power down".

Then the Samsung Galaxy S8+ turned off, and I was able to then boot to the system menu, which we'll cover in another blog post.

Depending on the current phone configuration, you may see a factory reset option in this maintenance menu as well, which may be a quicker choice if that is your goal.

Another reader with a Samsung Galaxy A5 (Thanks Richard!) provided his steps to successfully power down the A5. I found a video demonstrating most of these steps in case that is helpful as well.

How to turn off a Samsung Galaxy A5 without the PIN:

1. Hold power + volume down buttons to do a hard reset, until you feel the phone vibrate.

2. Quickly switch and hold volume up + power + home.

3. You should see a blue Android screen saying "updating".

4. When you see the Android "no command" screen, hold power and press volume up to boot into recovery mode.

   S11, E21

   The Walking Dead

   Separated from their children, Maggie, Gabriel, and Rosita track a military convoy to a mysterious destination. Ezekiel, Kelly, Negan, and Annie find themselves at a work site. Daryl and Carol follow a train that has taken Connie aboard.

   Some people love read receipts. Some people hate read receipts. If you fall into the latter camp and you use Microsoft Teams, you’ll be glad to know that you can turn off read receipts for direct messages.

   By default, users of Microsoft Teams can turn off read receipts, but your admins can change that to force read receipts to be on. If that’s the case, you can’t turn them off, but you can avoid sending them, to an extent. We’ll cover that as well.

   How to Turn Off Read Receipts

   In Microsoft Teams, click on your profile picture in the top-right corner of the window and select “Settings.”

   

   Navigate to the “Privacy” tablet and toggle off “Read Receipts.”

   

   If you have any chats open in separate windows, you’ll need to close and reopen them for this to take effect in those chats. But otherwise, this works immediately.

   How to Avoid Sending Read Receipts

   If your administrators have forced read receipts to be on for everyone, then you won’t be able to turn this setting off. However, read receipts are only triggered when you open a chat, so as long as you don’t open the chat, a read receipt won’t be sent.

   This means that you can be a little sneaky by changing your notification settings to make sure that chat replies are shown in the banner. The banner is the pop-up preview of new messages in the bottom-right corner of Microsoft Teams. That way, you can read messages that are sent to you without triggering a read receipt.

   To do this, click on your profile picture in the top-right corner of the window and select “Settings.”

   

   Open the “Notifications” tab, then click the “Edit” button next to the “Chat” option.

   

   Make sure that “@mentions” is set to “Banner and Feed” and “Replies” is set to “Banner.”

   

   This way, you can see chat messages in pop-up notifications without triggering the read receipt. You can even reply from the notification preview without triggering the read receipt, although once you’ve replied, it’ll be obvious that you’ve read the message anyway.