How to Fix An Android Phone Not Receiving Texts

If your phone can send but not receive text messages, you may want to know why this happens. Here in this post, you can get some reasons for this issue and read some ways to fix it.

Author Avatar Joy Taylor Last Updated: May. 26, 2021

Instant communication has made Smartphones so popular, and the inability to receive messages hampers our ability to respond promptly to the texts you get. But sometimes it occurs that your Android phone has stopped receiving text, or even can’t send messages.

Why Android phones would stop receiving text messages and how to fix? Fortunately, all the solutions to this problem won’t take much time to complete. So, in this article, we are going to take you through the reasons and help you fix the problem.

Also Read: How to Fix Android Phone/Tablet Won’t Stay Connected to Wi-Fi >

Why Is My Phone Not Receiving Texts

The most common reasons why Android phones can’t receive messages should be the network, a sending and receiving device, and the messaging app. Because they have to work normally so that SMSs can be exchanged between two Smartphones. In case either of these components is malfunctioning, the message will be delayed or it won’t be delivered at all.

If the network or the carrier is experiencing a temporary problem, there is nothing you can do but be patient and wait for the service to be restored. Sometimes your device may have poor reception because of your current location, and before doing anything else you should check if your device doesn’t have the signal.

Also, enabling the Airplane mode on your device will prevent it from receiving texts, and you must make sure that it is disabled.

Effective Solutions to Fix Android Stopped Receiving Texts

Solution 1. Delete Old Messages

One reason that you can no longer receive messages can be that you already received too many texts. The easiest way to fix this is to delete old messages from your phone. Here’s how:

Step 1: Open the messaging app on your phone and tap on the three-dot icon.

Step 2: Choose the settings option from the menu that appeared on the screen, locate the Manage SIM card messages setting, and tap on it. You can then choose if you want to delete all messages from your phone or just those you no longer need.

Also Read: How to Retrieve Deleted Text Messages from Android >

Solution 2. Check the Blocked Numbers List

Sometimes you may unintentionally add some of your contacts to the block numbers list. Once you do this you won’t be able to receive calls or messages from them. Going through your list of blocked contacts is the easiest way to determine if the number from which a text message was sent was accidentally added to this list.

Solution 3. Increase the Text Message Limit

Smartphones have the maximum number of text messages they can store, and once this limit is exceeded they stop displaying SMSs that were sent to you. Simply increasing the device’s text message limit will fix the problem and you can do this in just a few taps. Here’s what you need to do:

Step 1: Access the messaging app from the device’s home screen and then tap on the three-dot icon. Choose the Settings option from the menu and pick the Text Message Limit feature.

Step 2: Proceed to increase the device’s text message limit and confirm the changes by tapping on the Set button.

However, you should keep in mind that the steps for changing an Android’s text message limit may vary from model to model.

Solution 4. Restart the device

A simple reboot of your phone may do the trick. Your device may freeze or glitch for a broad range of reasons and a quick restart may fix the problem and enable you to see the messages that were sent to you.

Although the process of restarting an Android phone is not identical on all models, usually you just have to press and hold the power button until the Reset option along with the Power Off and Screenshot features appears on your screen.

Solution 5. Clear the cache

Although we don’t always pay any attention to it, the cache can slow down an Android device significantly. The cache is basically the data that is stored automatically so that a request for that data can be processed more quickly.

This data occupies space on your device and sometimes it can slow it down, which is the reason why you should clear the cache of the messaging app on your phone regularly.

Step 1: Head over to the Settings menu and search for the Apps submenu. Tap on it once you locate it and start scrolling through the list of apps until you find the device’s native messaging app.

Step 2: Tap on the Storage option and then proceed to clear the Data and Cache. Restart your phone afterward and check if it can receive messages.

Solution 6. Update the Phone’s OS

Outdated OS can cause lagging of the apps you are using to communicate with your friends, which is the reason why it is important to keep the operating system on your device updated. Even though most Android devices initiate the OS update automatically, you must restart them so that the update can be completed. Failing to update Android OS can cause a variety of issues including difficulties with receiving text messages.

Conclusion

Detecting the reason why your Android phone stopped receiving messages may require using different solutions to this problem until you find the one that resolves the issue. In most cases rebooting the device is sufficient to restore its ability to receive SMSs.

Additionally, you can clear the cache or perform a system update if the issue persists after a restart. We hope that this article has helped you resolve any problems your Android phone had with receiving text messages. Leave a comment and let us know.

Author Avatar
Joy Taylor Twitter Share Facebook Share

Member of iMobie team as well as an Apple fan, love to help more users solve various types of iOS & Android related issues.

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