Apple, please stop announcing people's emoji reactions in my AirPods

Senior Correspondent covering technology and culture I love emoji reactions. Just not on my headphones. Francesco Carta fotografo/Getty Images Apple has been committing a grave injustice against us for years, and it's time someone speaks up and voices what the people have felt powerless to say. That brave person is me.The problem is that iMessage reactions — such as someone liking a text with the thumbs-up emoji — keep playing in my AirPods. There should be a way to turn this off.Here's the problem. If you get an iMessage while wearing your headphones, your phone will announce it: "From [name]: message here." That's really useful and helpful! I find this feature fantastic.However, when I'm wearing my AirPods, I'm typically not looking at my phone — I'm walking around, listening to a podcast while doing dishes or at the gym. These are all times I want to know if I got a new text — maybe I'm at the grocery store and my husband texts me to say we need more eggs. Great! Let those notifications rip! I love it!!!But you know what I do NOT need to know? If someone reacted with the heart emoji to a message in a group chat. The useful thumbs-up emoji is great, but I don't want to hear about it while I'm taking a walk! Business Insider Reactions in iMessage are great. They're highly efficient: sometimes you just want to give a thumbs-up to let someone know you acknowledged the message, or a heart to show you appreciate a baby photo or what have you. Apple, I salute you: this was a great feature. You really cooked with this one.However, there is no way to turn off notifications for just those reactions — you can turn off announcements of all messages in your headphones, but then it means you won't hear the "hey can you also pick up eggs" text.The emoji announcement problem in AirPods is similar to another issue that long plagued iMessage: if someone isn't on an iPhone, the reactions would come in as separate messages altogether. One Android in the group and a green text bubble meant full-on chaos in the chat.I have a very active group chat with a bunch of friends who are bigtime emoji reaction users, but one friend is on Android, which means it's a green bubble chat. For years, this meant that the emoji reactions were a nightmare for her — so much that she muted the group and would only rarely check in. Thankfully, in 2024, Apple mostly fixed this problem by embracing a texting protocol called Rich Communications Services. The result? Green texts could use emoji reactions normally now. See? Progress can happen! John Ternus, if you want to really make a splash as Apple CEO, I have a suggestion for you: fix this. Make a toggle switch in the Notifications settings of the Messages app so you can turn off emoji reaction announcements.I reached out to Apple to ask if this is something they're considering adding. I'll let you know if I hear back! Read next Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Katie Notopoulos is a senior correspondent at Business Insider who writes about technology, business, and culture.Previously, Katie was a tech reporter at BuzzFeed News and has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, Fast Company, and MIT Technology Review. Tech iPhone