Stop Robot Calls on Your IPhone, Once and for All
Robocalls are getting worse – this should be a familiar headline, if not a familiar feeling, to anyone with a smartphone. Mine is a little better, but I have a lot of friends who are not so fortunate and tired of calls after calls about random insurance scams, “special court notices” or what is the last spam of the day.
While we’ve written extensively about the various tools you can use to minimize robot calls, if you’re nearing a tipping point, it’s time to take more drastic action . This trick is for iPhone users only, but we’ll be back soon with methods that Android users can try too.
Secret weapon
You’re going to use iOS Do Not Disturb mode, which you probably only use when you don’t want to be disturbed while you sleep. In this fun little twist, you’ll want to set your phone to Do Not Disturb mode indefinitely. You will now and always enjoy the sweet silence.
To do this, open the iOS Settings app and tap Do Not Disturb. Disable any schedule you may have set previously and tap the small switch to enable this feature. Never turn it off.
However, you are not done on this screen yet. Scroll down to the Phone section and make sure Allow Calls From is set to All Contacts or, if you want to limit yourself a bit, Favorites. This means that your device won’t ring if someone is not already your contact, but you can always call back unknown important calls if they leave voicemail.
I would also enable Retry Calls so that a call from an unknown caller will break through your wall of silence in case the person is actually trying to reach you.
The only caveat to this Do Not Disturb philosophy is that you also won’t receive notifications when you receive text messages: your screen won’t pop up with a message, your device won’t vibrate, and you won’t hear any sounds. However, there is an interesting way around this .
Open the iOS Contacts app and tap on a contact – you want to know that he is texting you, even if your device is in Do Not Disturb mode. Click Edit in the upper-right corner of the contact card, and then click Text Tone. Turn on emergency bypass so that every text it sends goes to your device.
This little trick also has one caveat. Any contacts who use Slam Bypass will no longer obey your device’s Do Not Disturb setting, which means any silly texts they send while you sleep will be transmitted to your device. I’ve tried various variations of this – sometimes iOS was confusing – but it looks like human messages will vibrate and text tone even if your device’s physical switch is set to vibration / mute.
This can be annoying if, say, you’re watching a movie, so make sure you turn your device volume down to minimum (at least). Or, you can give your person a personalized text tone that is at least usually lower in volume than the default tone you use. (You can also just turn off your phone when in a movie theater, fancy restaurant, etc.)
You will also want to view your contacts and set this feature for any number of people you want to receive messages from, as otherwise, Do Not Disturb will dump whatever they send you to your Messages app without notification. It’s a tedious process if you have a lot of friends and I hope they still let you get some sleep from time to time.
Still, if you’re tired of being harassed by robots, blocking everyone you can with Do Not Disturb is an option – a nuclear option, but an option nonetheless.