IMessage Prompts: Understanding the Reason Behind Contact Check-In Requests and Easy Fixes

Has your iPhone been asking you to “Check In” with people on iMessage? You might have tried to turn this feature off, only to find that you can’t. Here’s what “Check In” in iMessage does, and a way to (almost) get rid of it.

Why is iMessage Asking Me to Check In with Someone?

Check In is a feature that was added in iOS 17 that prompts you to check in with your regular iMessage contacts. The Check In feature itself is quite useful: it automatically notifies contacts when you arrive at your destination (and just as importantly, if you don’t make it, so that they can check up on you).

What Could Go Wrong?

The main problem with this is that iMessage (and Siri) suggests to you, via a notification, that you should check in with someone. Often it’s not someone you want to know your travel plans or location. Just because you message someone frequently, doesn’t mean you want to share this information with them.

Unfortunately, the button to share your location in the Check In notification is really easy to accidentally tap. We can probably all imagine a few scenarios where inadvertently sharing your movements with a colleague or acquaintance might make life a bit complicated. How to Turn This Off Annoyingly, there’s no direct way to turn this feature off completely. However, you can get rid of the pop-up suggestions by turning off Siri Suggestions for iMessage .

To do this, open the Settings app on your iPhone, then select Messages > Siri & Search, and then turn off “Learn from this App” as well as all the options under “Suggestions.”

While this isn’t a perfect solution, and it does mean other Siri suggestions for iMessage won’t appear (does anyone actually use them?), if you’re concerned about your privacy it’s a worthwhile trade-off.

You can still manually enable Check In whenever you need to use it with a trusted contact.

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