How to disable automatic opening of iMessage on my MacBook Pro when I open my iPhone messages

For me the iMessages icon appeared in the cmd+tab menu each time I received a message (with the text "from iPhone"), despite my attempt to disable everything under the sun. This is what finally fixed it for me:

System Preferences > General > Uncheck the Allow Handoff setting!

Things that mysteriously don't work:

* Removing every account from iMessages on your mac

* Turning off all notifications of iMessages on your mac

* chmod'ing the iMessages binary to 000

* Unloading the apsd service from launchctl

* Manually blocking port 5223

Yes, this has been driving me insane.

Hello melinalw,

I understand that Messages is opening on your MacBook Pro when you receive a message on your iPhone, despite attempts to prevent this behavior. This may be due to having Text Message Forwarding set up on your iPhone. This can be checked in Settings > Messages > Text Message Forwarding on your iPhone.

On your iPhone, go to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive. Add a check to both your phone number and email address. Then go to Settings > Messages > Text Message Forwarding and enable the device or devices that you want to forward messages to.

Use Continuity to connect your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204681

All my best.

Hi! Had the same problem, tried to use the advice above, did not work for me. The solution is just to turn off iMessage.

Go to Settings-Messages-iMessage and turn the iMessage off. Good luck!