Catch up on messages you missed on Mac

If you receive messages while you have notifications paused or you’re away from your Mac, you can catch up on a busy conversation in two ways: you can jump to the first message you haven’t seen or you can read a summary.

Messages are grouped by conversation in the conversation list. A dot indicates you haven’t yet read one or more messages in that conversation.

Open Messages for me

Jump to the first unread message

  1. Go to the Messages app on your Mac.

  2. Select an unread conversation, then click the Go Up button.

    Your view of the conversation moves up to the first unread message.

See message summaries

Apple Intelligence* can show you a summary of unread messages in a conversation. See Use Apple Intelligence in Messages. Use Apple Intelligence in Messages.

Find out when messages were sent

  1. Go to the Messages app on your Mac.

  2. Do one of the following:

    • Control-click a message in the conversation transcript and choose Show Times.

    • If you have a trackpad or a Magic Mouse, you can also swipe left with two fingers on the message.

*Apple Intelligence is available in beta with support for the following languages: English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. Some features may not be available in all languages or regions. For more information on language and feature availability and system requirements, see the Apple Support article How to get Apple Intelligence.
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