Ignorance is bliss. And this is best applicable to unknown callers. Anyone who’s not in your contact book. They’re either a spam caller, a robocall, or an unknown number that you probably don’t want to talk to. If you’re privileged enough that you don’t need to pick up calls from anyone for your job or personal life, you can automate this blissful process using a new feature in iOS 13. Learn how to automatically silence unknown and spam calls in iOS 13.

How to Silence/Mute Robocalls and Spam Callers on iPhone

How This Feature Works

Over the past couple of years, Apple has made it easier to deal with spam calls, robocalls, and spam SMS, but it was dependent on third-party apps. You can install apps like Truecaller to automatically block spam SMS and spam calls, or at least to alert you of robocalls. But in my personal experience, this rarely worked well. Others, especially in the west, have a better experience using apps like Nomorobo and Hiya. But still, nothing beats a global, built-in kill switch. Which is what the new iOS 13 feature is.

It’s called Silence Unknown Callers and it does just that. It will automatically silence a call from anyone who is not in your contact book. You won’t hear a sound or any vibration, even if your phone is not in Silent mode. If you have a Voicemail setup, the call will be directed automatically to voicemail. This would be a good time to get a Visual Voicemail service on your carrier so you can read the transcript of the message later if you wish.

If you don’t have Voicemail feature (which I don’t), the calls are just silenced and rejected. They’ll show up in the Phone app as a missed call and you can call them back if you want (unlike blocked calls). Or you can just enjoy the bliss.

Automatically Mute/Silence Unknown Callers on iPhone in iOS 13

This feature needs to be enabled from the Settings app.

Step 1: After updating to iOS 13 on your iPhone, open the Settings app.

Step 2: Scroll down and tap on the Phone option.

Step 3: Here, scroll down to the Call Silencing and Blocked Contacts section.

Step 4: Turn on the Silence Unknown Callers feature.

More iOS 13 How-tos

We’re working on bringing you more detailed guides for how to use the new and awesome features in iOS 13. Once you’ve read our iOS 13 tips and tricks article, read our how-tos below.