My favorite iOS 26 feature has banished spam callers once and for all

Macworld

There are few more frustrating iPhone experiences than receiving a spam call. Whether it’s interrupting your work or play, it doesn’t take much for a junk call to take you out of the moment.

The problem is that they’re seemingly extremely difficult to stop, and no matter what you try, a few still seem to make it through the net. At least, that was the case before iOS 26’s Call Screening feature came along. Since I installed iOS 26, it’s stopped unwanted calls in their tracks, leaving me in spam-free bliss all day long.

The way Call Screening works is extremely simple. When you get a call from an unknown number, the caller will first be put through to an automated voice that asks them to identify themselves and the reason for their call.

Once they’ve done that, your phone will ring and show a transcript of the caller’s answer. At that point, you can decide if you want to answer the call or not. If you don’t, the caller is disconnected. You’re not disturbed while the other party is talking to your robo-screener, other than a short alert you get saying someone is on the line. You’re then buzzed again once the identification is complete. It’s short, simple, and extremely effective – and you never need to pick up the phone when an unknown number appears.

A win-win situation

I’ve found that Call Screening works superbly, and it’s absolutely slashed the number of times I get disturbed by frustrating calls throughout my day.

Interestingly, calls from unknown numbers tend to go one of two ways. Either the caller immediately hangs up when they realize they need to identify themselves, or they out themselves as a spammer, letting me to quickly decline the call.

Before I used Call Screening, spammers would get through relatively easily. Apple’s “Silence unknown callers” feature quarantined both good and bad numbers, so I kept it off, and blocking individual numbers was rarely effective against number spoofers. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve picked up the phone, only to hear a lengthy pause and a clamor of voices in the background, before an obvious scammer comes on the line trying to convince me they work for Apple and need my login details. I would often hang up before even hearing a voice. The routine became so familiar that I knew within a second or two that I’d made a mistake in answering my iPhone.

It might not seem like much, but these calls would frequently disrupt my day, whether I was trying to work or enjoy time with friends. A call like that is an annoyance that can ruin your concentration and distract you from your company, no matter how brief it ends up being. But with Call Screening on my side, I no longer need to worry about that.

Of course, sometimes a call from an unknown number is from a person I might want to hear from. But in cases like that, there’s no longer an issue, as Call Screening doesn’t block them. In fact, it helps them get through quicker. Once they’ve identified themselves, I can decide whether to answer or not.

In other words, Call Screening stops the bad guys and lets in the people I actually want to hear from. I’d call that a win-win situation.




Call screening in iOS 26 will send spam calls to oblivion while still letting important calls get through.Foundry

How to enable and use Call Screening

To get started with Call Screening, you’ll need to have a compatible iPhone that’s running iOS 26. That includes anything from the iPhone 11 range (released in September 2019) onwards.

Once iOS 26 is installed on your iPhone, you don’t need to install anything else to get Call Screening up and running, and it doesn’t depend on enabling Apple Intelligence, for example. When you first get a call from an unknown number, you might see a prompt to enable Call Screening. Otherwise, you can adjust the feature’s settings manually. To do so, open the Settings app and go to Apps > Phone. From there, scroll down to the Screen Unknown Callers section. You’ll now have three choices: “Never,” “Ask Reason for Calling,” and “Silence.”

Selecting “Never” will disable Call Screening, allowing any unknown number to get through to you in the normal way. “Ask Reason for Calling” means that unknown callers will need to provide more information before reaching you. “Silence” simply means that calls from unknown numbers are silenced, sent straight to voicemail, and will show up in your Recents list.

Select “Ask Reason for Calling” and Call Screening will be enabled, giving you an extra layer of protection against the scourge of spam calls.




Callers with unknown numbers can identify themselves so you know when to pick up.IDG

Shut out the spammers

I’m not the only person who has felt the benefits of iOS 26’s Call Screening – social media is littered with accounts of other users who feel the same way.

One Canadian Reddit user said it was “Literally the best feature. I finally have relief.” They added that they haven’t received a spam call in over 24 hours, whereas previously they were getting three to ten calls every day. It’s been described as “hands down my favorite feature” in iOS 26 and “pure bliss” by other social media denizens. It’s not hard to find a litany of similarly effusive praise elsewhere.

Every time Apple updates iOS, the changes it unveils are often met with skepticism or outright hostility in some quarters. And while the Liquid Glass redesign has come in for its fair share of criticism, it’s hard to see Call Screening receiving anywhere near as much negativity. Judging from the online response and my own anecdotal enquiries, it’s hard to find anyone who is dead set against it.

If you haven’t already, I’d encourage you to give Call Screening a go. You might find it brings a little peace and quiet to your day – and shuts out the spammers for good.