by Lawrence I. Charters
Without much effort on your part, you’ve been placed on lots of phone lists, call trees, and the like. You probably get unsolicited calls every day, from politicians, political groups, commercial entities, publicists, non-profits, scammers, and just random phone calls.
These calls are annoying. You don’t want to give up your phone number and become an electronic hermit, but you also don’t want to constantly be interrupted. And iOS 26 includes two very good solutions to this dilemma: call screening and call filtering.
Most unsolicited calls are either fully or partially automated. A computer or, in some cases, a custom-built device for making calls, has a list of numbers to call. The list can be past campaign contributors, past customers, customers of another company that sold you their list of customers, or just a block of numbers, such as calling every number in the 713 area code. There are 10 million possible phone numbers in a single area code, but there are devices designed to do just that: call 10 million numbers, looking for someone to pick up the phone.
Once you pick up the phone, the automated system does one of two things. Most commonly, it has a recorded message asking you to do something. Sometimes, the automated system sends an alert to a human, and the human, rather than the recorded voice, starts speaking from a script. iOS can deal with both kinds of calls.
Call Filtering
The simplest one is not new: call filtering. Several companies have created apps to filter calls from known numbers used for spamming, and the major phone companies also engage in some spam filtering. How this works: if the calling number is listed as a known source of spam or fraud calls, it is simply silenced. Your phone does not ring, and you are not interrupted.
iOS also offers another kind of filtering: calls from unknown (to you) numbers are silenced. This may seem to be a good idea, but there is a good chance that automated appointment reminders from your doctor or dentist or mechanic or hair dresser will be silenced, as well as things as fraud alerts from your bank, recall notices from vendors, and anything else that may be vital but isn’t in your Contacts list.
Screening Unknown Callers
A new tool is Screening Unknown Callers, which is a clever way of thwarting robotic calls. When you turn this option on, your iPhone asks the caller the reason for calling, and then waits for an answer. Automated call systems are stymied at this point: they aren’t designed to answer questions, and your phone doesn’t ring. If there is a person on the other end, they can identify themselves and the reason for the call, your phone rings, you can hear their name and reason for calling, and answer — or not.
Personal experience
I turned on Screening Unknown Callers on September 15, 2025, immediately after upgrading to iOS 26. Here are the results over the past nine days:
Total calls: 93
Total calls from identified numbers, phone rang: 18
Total calls from unidentified numbers, phone did not ring: 75
Total interruptions from unidentified numbers: 0
iOS keeps track of your calls (they are shown under “Recents” in the Phone app), making it easy to check and see if something was misidentified. So far, iOS 26’s Screening Unknown Callers works wonders.
Will the scammers and advertisers and political action groups and whatnot figure out work-arounds? Maybe. But for the moment, life is more tranquil.
How to turn on Call Filtering and Screening Unknown Callers
Step 1: Download and install iOS 26. If your iPhone won’t support iOS 26, you need to give very serious thought to getting a new phone.
Step 2:
1) Launch Settings.
2) Scroll all the way down on the opening screen until you come to Apps, at the very bottom.
3) After opening Apps, scroll down to Phone, or press the P in the alphabetical navigation along the right edge to jump to P.
4) In the Phone app, scroll down to Screen Unknown Callers, and select Ask Reason for Calling.
Silencing unknown numbers, while effective, is not recommended, as this would silence all calls not in your Contacts. This might include doctors, dentists, friends and relatives that you haven’t entered into Contacts, emergency services, etc.
5) Scroll down to the next section, Call Filtering, and turn on Spam filtering.
Filtering out Unknown Callers, while an option, is not recommended, as, once again, there is a good chance you will filter out calls you really do want to hear.
There are many, many other things you can do with an iPhone and iOS 26. But when it comes to using the iPhone as a phone, screening and filtering calls are the most useful.