I texted someone, but I’m not sure if their iPhone was off when I sent it. The message says ‘Delivered,’ but I don’t know if iMessage still shows that even if their phone is off. Can someone explain how this works for iPhones?
Nah, if their iPhone was actually off when you sent the text, it wouldn’t say “Delivered.” iMessage only shows “Delivered” when the message successfully reaches their device. That means their phone was on long enough to receive it, or at least connected to some network. If their phone was off or in airplane mode, it’d get stuck with the little blue “Sending” bubble until they come back online. Basically, no cheating the system here – their phone was def on or at least awake when your message landed.
Honestly, I think @sternenwanderer nailed it, but let’s just clear up a bit of the ‘technical mystery’ around this. When iMessage says ‘Delivered,’ it’s because the message has been successfully handed off to the recipient’s device—it doesn’t mean they’ve read it, but it does mean Apple’s servers confirm delivery to their phone. If their iPhone was really off, iMessage wouldn’t magically slap ‘Delivered’ on there. It would keep spinning like it’s trying to send. But here’s a curveball: if their iPhone was off but they had another Apple device (like an iPad or Mac) logged in with the same iCloud account, the message could’ve been marked ‘Delivered’ to one of those devices instead.
So yeah, their phone might have been off, but maybe, just maybe, it dinged on their iPad while they were pretending to ‘work’ or something. People always forget iMessage is a sneaky multi-device system! That said, if there’s no other devices in play, there’s no ‘Delivered’ unless the phone gets the message.