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Despite laws meant to regulate robocalls by the Federal Communications Commission (as well as several state-specific laws), the problem isn’t going away. In August of this year alone, people in the U.S. received over 4.1 billion robocalls. A growing number of those are being funneled to customers’ cell phones as landlines shrink in popularity. Now, Apple is rolling out a new tool to block them.
Apple’s latest iOS 26 release includes a feature that screens calls to prevent both the annoyance of dealing with the call and the increased chance of fraud. The new feature lets iPhone owners decide how they want incoming calls from unknown numbers to be handled.
You can let the calls ring through, as they do now. You can mute them, sending them directly to voicemail. Or you can have the phone ask the caller to give more information about who they are and why they’re calling.
Should you choose this new, third option, the phone won’t ring on your end. Siri will answer the call, instead, and gather the information. A status message will appear on the phone’s lock screen, letting you read the replies and jump into the live call at any time, if you’d like.
To activate the call screening tool on your iPhone, you’ll need to follow a few steps:
- Install iOS 26.
- Open the Settings app.
- Select “Apps,” then choose “phone.”
- Scroll down and select “Screen Unknown Callers.”
- Choose which of the three options you’d prefer.
The addition of the tool for iOS devices comes several years after Android began offering a call-screening option. The first of those features rolled out in 2018 for Android devices and it has been updated several times since, letting phone owners see a real-time transcription of the caller’s request. (It has also been integrated into Android Auto.)
Android owners can enable the feature by entering their phone app, tapping “More,” then “Settings,” then “Call Screen.”
There are, of course, a number of third-party apps that claim to block robocalls on cell phones, but the track record of most of those is so-so. Some let calls slip through, thanks to advances by scammers, which spoof legitimate phone numbers, letting them bypass the blockers. Others, meanwhile, unintentionally block numbers that are important themselves (including healthcare facilities and auto insurance companies).
Both Apple and Google have long allowed owners of their phone to send calls from unknown numbers to voicemail, but that option has also led to people missing important calls.
The new tool from Apple (and the existing one from Android) offers a middle-ground, where owners won’t have to risk dealing with a robocall, but are still able to take the call belatedly if they find it’s from someone they want to speak with.
Both Apple and Android also offer a separate tool in their texting/messaging apps that let users filter texts from unknown senders, which can eliminate job offer scams and attempts at identity theft.
Robocalls are on the rise this year. YouMail, which tracks the activity, says the first eight months of the year have seen 36.7 billion robocalls, a 7.1 percent increase over the same period in 2024. On average, Americans receive 133.9 million robocalls per day (or 1,550 robocalls per second).
Experts point to artificial intelligence as part of the reason for the surge, despite laws passed last year by the FCC that outlaw robocalls from using voices generated by AI.
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Chris Morris
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