Android: Disable MMS - how to turn off the feature

MMS allow you to send videos, pictures and documents with your smartphone in addition to text. Incoming MMS are automatically downloaded and opened by Android smartphones. To prevent this, you need to adjust the service's settings.

Turn off automatic downloading and opening of MMS

If you want to prevent the automatic reception of MMS, it works through the settings of the messaging app of your Android smartphone. Follow these steps to turn off the automatic download and opening of multimedia messages:

1. Open the Messages app on your smartphone.
2. Tap on the three dots and access the settings via the menu.
3. Search the category "Messages" and tap on the item "MMS" to open the corresponding setting options.
4. Uncheck the option "Automatically retrieve".

Many mobile phone providers have now deactivated the direct reception of MMS in the context of malware via the service. Instead of the MMS, you then only receive a notification with a link to the content, so you can decide for yourself whether you want to retrieve the message or not.

WhatsApp and Co - successor to the MMS

MMS are hardly used today, the reason for this are, among other things, the numerous limitations and costs incurred. For example, the size of an MMS is limited to a maximum of 300 kByte. Especially since there are other options such as WhatsApp, Telegram or iMessage, the service is outdated.