- iOS 26 adds the new Call Screening feature to iPhone
- The new feature automatically asks callers for a name and reason for calling, and provides a real-time transcript
- New data suggests more than 1 billion hoax calls could be intercepted
A new feature in iOS 26 could block more than a billion spam calls each year, according to new data.
Apple is adding a new Call Screening feature to iPhone with iOS 26, and with Call Screening enabled, your iPhone will ask for a name and reason for calling before sending the call through, building on the Live Voicemail feature added with iOS 17.
Similarly to Live Voicemail, Call Screening provides a real-time transcription of the caller’s response to those initial questions, and then gives the user the choice to pick up or ignore the call.
The feature will also be available in the Wi-Fi calling-enabled Phone apps coming with iPadOS 26 and macOS Tahoe 26.
A billion blocked calls
Analysis by second-hand phone marketplace Compare and Recycle suggests that this could block more than a billion scam calls each year in the UK alone.
Though the report provided by Compare and Recycle is UK-specific, it tracks that this figure could increase quite substantially with other countries factored in.
The report estimates that the average person in the UK gets four spam calls per month. The report also estimates that just shy of 24 million people in the UK will get access to Call Screening, working out to more than 1.1 billion intercepted calls each year.
Personally, I can’t stand spam calls, and there have been days – and even whole months – where I seem to get much more than the estimated four calls.
Additionally, I get plenty of calls that drop as soon as I pick up, or as soon as I say something. It’s never nice to imagine that my number’s been scraped or marked as ‘active’ in a database for scammers.
To be honest, the issue is so prevalent that I sometimes don’t pick up the phone at all, instead waiting for a voicemail or follow-up email to know exactly who’s trying to reach me.
The addition of Call Screening could see me pop the SIM card out of my trusty Oppo Find X8 Pro and back into one of the best iPhones, for the sake of using my phone as an actual phone again.
With that said, the official Apple press release for iOS 26 doesn’t make it clear whether Call Screening is an Apple Intelligence feature, in which case my iPhone 15 would be out of luck.
WWDC saw the announcement of plenty more features for iPhone, iPad, and Mac – head over to our WWDC2025 recap for a full rundown.
And be sure to let us know whether you’re looking forward to using Call Screening on your iPhone in the comments below.
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jamie.richards@futurenet.com (Jamie Richards)
