This App Lets You Secretly Leave Annoying Group Texts

Quietly remove yourself from that brunch planning convo with ease.

(GroupXiT)
(GroupXiT)

Is there anything more annoying than being stuck in a group text about your second cousin’s bridal shower, and getting updated every time someone sends a message debating the pros and cons of bridal bingo? No. There is not.

Sign Up For Our Daily Newsletter

By clicking submit, you agree to our <a href="http://observermedia.com/terms">terms of service</a> and acknowledge we may use your information to send you emails, product samples, and promotions on this website and other properties. You can opt out anytime.

See all of our newsletters

Thankfully, there’s a new solution for that: GroupXiT, an app that lets you stealthily remove yourself from group texting threads you’re no longer interested in. Additionally, if there’s a person in the conversation who’s really annoying you — maybe someone’s using way too many wedding-themed hashtags — the app also lets you stop seeing their messages in the thread on your phone.

“That’s what were about – allowing the user the ability to decide what conversations they want to be a part of, what individuals they want to communicate with, and if they decide they don’t want to be bothered, to just turn off the chat altogether,” cofounder Amos Winbush III told Betabeat. Mr. Winbush cofounded GroupXiT with Tyler Thackray, who’s also CTO.

And don’t worry, your friends probably won’t find out you removed yourself from their all-important convo. GroupXiT users can give the app certain keywords, and the app will alert them when those keywords show up in the threads from which they’ve removed themselves. You could get an alert, for example, when someone mentioned your first name.

“We’ve always had the ability to control our inbox, but we’ve never had the ability to control someone’s conversation to us,” Mr. Winbush said.

To clarify, GroupXiT isn’t a messaging app; no communication happens within the app. When you open GroupXiT, you’ll see a replications of all the messages stored in your phone’s native SMS service. You enter your desired settings into GroupXiT — which convos you’d like to leave, which annoying friends you never want to hear from again — and GroupXiT transfers those settings over to your phone’s native messager.

Because it works with SMS/MMS messaging systems, GroupXiT is currently only available for Android users (iPhones use iMessaging). Android users can, however, still use the app to hide messages from iPhone users, since iMessages are sent via SMS to Android phones.

You can either download a free trial version of the app, which gives you six sample “exits,” or pay $1.99 for the “Premium” version, which features unlimited exiting privileges, plus some cool data storage features.

Can there be an iPhone version soon?

This App Lets You Secretly Leave Annoying Group Texts