Unfortunately, in recent years, spam levels have reached the stratosphere. It is not uncommon for people to receive at least a few spam calls and messages every day. What’s worse, there’s no clear way to get rid of all spam forever.
At the same time, if you become adept at blocking anyone you don’t want to have contact with on Mac, you may be able to significantly reduce the amount of spam and annoying ads you receive.
Let’s see how blocking contacts works on Mac and how to block someone on MacBook in various apps starting with Messages.
How to block a contact in Messages on Mac?
The Messages app on Mac and iMessage in general tend to attract a lot of spam, usually asking you to click a link or reply with a 2FA code sent to your device (never do this!).
While there’s no clear way to prevent spam from reaching Messages, you can block any unknown contact to weed out repeat offenders.
Here’s how to block people on MacBook:
- Open messages
- Select a conversation with someone you want to block
- Go to Conversation ➙ Block person… in the menu bar
- Block
If you’re like most people, you don’t just use Messages. Plus, you probably have half a dozen other messengers, from Slack to WhatsApp to Facebook Messenger to Telegram. Keeping all these apps open and waiting between them is exhausting and confusing. What if you moved them all into one app? With IM+, you can!
IM+ combines any number of messaging apps into one ultra-fast, intuitive interface – no more scrolling through multiple windows. At the same time, you still get the benefit of notifications, and you can even set up separate notification groups (for example, work and personal) for different apps to keep distractions in check. Use IM+ to share text, photos, videos, voice messages, and other files with any contact, on any messaging service.
If you use WhatsApp primarily for messaging (as more than two billion people do), you’ll find ChatMate for WhatsApp to be a much better alternative to the default WhatsApp Mac app.
ChatMate for WhatsApp is a significant improvement over the default app for several reasons. It supports multiple accounts, including full support for business accounts. It allows you to granularly adjust important notifications. It also has a privacy mode, which only lets you see a message once you hover over it, and locks your chats with a password to prevent unauthorized access. It even allows you to create custom keyboard shortcuts and more!
How to block a new number on Mac
What if you already know a number that you need to block beforehand, even before they have a chance to contact you? There is no direct solution. Basically, you have to add them to your Contacts first, and then block them via Messages.
Here’s how to block someone in Mac Messages, even if they haven’t contacted you yet:
- Open Contacts and create a new contact with their phone number or email (if they use email for iMessage)
- Open Messages ➙ Settings… (Command + ,)
- Go to iMessage âž™ Blocked
- Click the plus (+) icon
- Select the newly created contact
Tip: If you have more than one number to block, you can create a generic contact (for example, Blocked) and add multiple numbers to it. Then Messages will block them all at once.
How to block FaceTime calls on Mac
While FaceTime doesn’t tend to get a lot of unwanted calls, they are much more disruptive than messages (or even audio calls), so it’s a good idea to block them immediately.
Note: Messages already shares your block list with FaceTime, so you don’t need to block contacts in both apps.
How to block a number on MacBook using FaceTime:
- Open FaceTime ➙ Settings… (Command + ,)
- Switch to the Blocked tab
- Select the plus icon to choose which contact you want to block
How to Unblock Someone on MacBook
You are now fully equipped to block anyone who distracts you. However, at some point you may make a mistake and block the wrong person, which means you won’t be able to contact them. Is there a way to unlock them?
To unblock someone from Messages or FaceTime:
- open the app
- Go to Settings… (Command + ,)
- Activate the Blocked tab
- Select any number you would like to unlock
- Click the minus (-) icon
More lockdown tools for your Mac
You now know how to quickly block and unblock contacts in Messages and FaceTime, which should significantly reduce the amount of spam you receive on a daily basis.
But it’s not just people that distract you, kill your productivity, and generally cause a lot of frustration. What about annoying online ads?
AdLock is one of the simplest and most effective ad blocking solutions out there. It not only filters ads, it also removes pop-ups, online chats, trackers, autoplay videos and more. You can specify which types of ads you want to remove and then enjoy safe and fast browsing forever.
Finally, with so many things demanding our attention these days, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to focus for long periods of time. Find yourself scrolling Twitter or watching YouTube while you should be working? You need Focus.
Focus is a simple app that blocks all the distractions on your Mac. You can configure which websites or apps should be blocked and set a recurring schedule that corresponds to your work. If you try to go to a website on the block list, Focus will show you a wise and time-saving quote. If you find your bad habits really hard to control, Focus also features an extreme mode, which makes it impossible to disable the preferences you set beforehand.
Just like that, you are now ready to remove all distractions from your Mac, whether they come in the form of unwanted FaceTime calls, iMessages, online ads (using AdLock), or addictive apps (using AdLock). help of Focus ). It’s hard to imagine a more serene Mac environment! Plus, you can consolidate all your messaging apps into IM+ and boost WhatsApp capabilities with ChatMate.
