How iOS 13&7;s “Silence Unknown Callers” Will Stop Phone Spam

iOS 13 has a new feature that might just save you from all spam and robocalls. The new Silence Unknown Callers feature will mute all calls coming from a number that7;s not in your contact list.

Stopping the Endless Stream of Spam Calls

Silence Unknown Callers is a simple toggle that will automatically block unknown numbers from calling you. Your contacts and people you7;ve interacted with will still be able to call you, but you won7;t be bothered by incoming calls from anyone else.

This feature is one of the biggest reasons we7;re excited for iOS 13 when Apple releases it sometime in fall 2019.

How Silence Unknown Callers Works

The Silence Unknown Callers feature is quite a blunt instrument2;it7;s a simple toggle in Settings. Once enabled, any call you receive from an unknown number will be silenced. If Siri Intelligence finds the number in the Mail, Messages, or Contacts app, the call will come through.

You can think of it as iOS automatically hitting the Decline button for you. You7;ll still get a Missed Call notification, and you7;ll find the number in the Recents list in the Phone app.

If you have voicemail enabled, the call will automatically go to the voicemail. This is where the visual voicemail feature will come in handy (availability and charges depend on your carrier).

When you go to the ;Voicemail; tab in the Phone app, you7;ll be able to listen or read the transcript of the voicemail (as you can see in the screenshot below).

If the message is important, you can choose to call them back. If not, delete the voicemail, and if needed, block the number.

In our testing, we found that if you call the number back, any subsequent calls you get from the number won7;t be silenced automatically.