How to Stop Signal From Telling You When Your Contacts Join

A phone with the Signal logo next to a cup of coffee.

When someone in your contacts signs up for Signal, you’ll see a message saying that person joined Signal. Now you know you can contact them on Signal. If you’d rather not see these notifications, you can disable them.

How to Disable Signal’s Contact Join Notifications

Signal uses phone numbers as addresses you can reach people at. When a phone number in your contacts signs up for Signal, you’ll see a notification telling you they’re reachable on Signal. The name associated with that person comes from the contact information saved on your phone. To hide these alerts, open the Signal app on your iPhone or Android phone. Tap your profile picture or username initials shown at the top-left corner of the Signal conversation list.

Tap your profile logo at the top-left of the Signal app.

Tap “Notifications” on the Signal settings menu screen.

Tap "Notifications."

Under Events, tap the slider to the right of “Contact Joined Signal” to disable these contact-join notifications.

Tap the "Contact Joined Signal" toggle.

That’s it—Signal won’t let you know when your friends, family members, coworkers, or other contacts join in the future. The Signal app will still know, of course. If you tap the “New Message” icon, you’ll see all your contacts who are on Signal, ready to be contacted.

Can You Stop Signal From Telling People When You Join?

There’s no way from preventing Signal from informing people when you join. If someone has your phone number in their contacts, Signal will let them know that phone number has joined Signal. This has nothing to do with whether you allow Signal access to your own contacts.

The only way to prevent this is to use a secondary phone number. Signal is designed to work with phone numbers and to be an easy-to-use replacement for SMS, which is why it works this way. If you want a chat service that doesn’t use phone numbers as identifiers—for example, if you would prefer usernames that don’t expose your phone number—Signal isn’t the app for you.

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Why Can’t I See the Burn Bar on My Apple Fitness+ Workouts?

What the Burn Bar Shows

First, let’s quickly recap what the Burn Bar actually shows. It compares how many calories you’ve burned in the past two minutes of your workout (and at the end, the average for the whole workout) to people who are roughly the same age, weight, and gender (so newbies aren’t compared to elite athletes). You’re given a ranking—“Behind the Pack,” “In the Pack,” “Middle of the Pack,” “Front of the Pack,” or “Ahead of the Pack”—based on how you’re doing.

The Burn Bar Takes Two Minutes to Appear

Since the Burn Bar is based on how hard you’ve gone over the previous two minutes of your workout, it doesn’t appear until after you’ve actually worked out for two minutes. If you’re not seeing the Burn Bar at the very start of a workout, this is probably why.

The Burn Bar Only Shows on Certain Workouts

strength workout in fitness+
Strength workouts aren’t about burning calories.

The Burn Bar only shows up on workouts where the aim is to burn calories. Some workouts, like Strength, Yoga, and Mindful Cooldowns, have different goals. The Burn Bar won’t appear in workouts like these because it’s not a good measure of performance.

In a Strength workout, for example, your goal is to perform high-quality repetitions that build muscle, not to get your heart rate up by bouncing around. The Burn Bar can’t compare your reps to other people’s, so Fitness+ won’t show it.

The Burn Bar Might Be Turned off

After your first workout, you get the option to disable the Burn Bar. If you did that by mistake—or deliberately turned off the Burn Bar at some point—you might need to turn it on.

In a workout, tap the metrics icon in the bottom right of the screen.

metrics button highlighted

Tap the toggle to the right of “Burn Bar” to turn it on.

burn bar toggle highlighted

If the Burn Bar option is already enabled on this screen, you’re probably not seeing it for one of the other reasons—you might need to wait two minutes, or it might not be relevant to your current workout.

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