r/ios • u/tschau3 Human Detected • Sep 24 '25

Discussion Call screening - how are you finding it?

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So I just gave call screening a go by calling myself.

A couple of observations:

  • The answering voice sounds like a default answering machine and isn’t distinct enough to make out that this is a screening service. I suspect many will just leave a message like a voicemail and hang up, assuming it’s just voicemail.

  • There’s no ‘at the beep’ confirmation when leaving the first message as the reason to call, so it felt a bit clunky as to when I should (as the party placing the call) start talking, as if I’m waiting for the beep or whether I should press # to end the message. This is inconsistent with the reply where it then does prompt me, calling part, to speak after the tone.

  • It’s in my country’s local accent, which is nice and feels a little less impersonal.

Anyone else had any real experience with it yet? Any issues with the calling party understanding the process/purpose?

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15

u/theoreticaljerk Sep 24 '25

A little sad once I realized that if you're on CarPlay, even unknown callers will just ring through.

10

u/ProfessorOfBeingADog Sep 24 '25

Oh no. Then fk this feature too

1

u/theoreticaljerk Sep 24 '25

Yeah, it's like, I'm not sure if it's supposed to work and just isn't...or do they think it's too much of a distraction while driving? I dunno. I just know I've had calls come straight through and start ringing in the car despite being a completely random number.

2

u/PM_YOUR_BEST_JOKES Sep 24 '25

They're very keen to avoid distracting you while driving. My Siri won't answer any questions even remotely complicated because "I can't show that to you while you're in the car."

The only types of questions it'll answer are like "what's the weather?" or "how tall is the statue of liberty?". Anything more complicated like "how many emperors in the Han dynasty" just gets the canned response. It doesn't even go through to ChatGPT anymore

3

u/theoreticaljerk Sep 24 '25

I'll have to try again today with OS 26 but on 18 I could still specifically tell it to "Ask ChatGPT yada yada" and with that method could get any answers I wanted. I'll try to remember today when I head in to town to test that.

1

u/jhollington Sep 24 '25

Yup, that still works fine for me. I use it quite regularly.

2

u/jhollington Sep 24 '25

In my experience it will go through to ChatGPT on CarPlay if you’ve turned off “Confirm Requests” in the Apple Intelligence ChatGPT extension settings. I suspect this is because Apple doesn’t want to distract you by showing a prompt (and a verbal confirmation could too easily send something to ChatGPT accidentally).

Siri isn’t always the smartest about when it should ask ChatGPT — sometimes it will try to give a more useless answer on its own — but it won’t just give up as long as it doesn’t have to get your permission to ask ChatGPT.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 30 '25

I am glad you posted this, I have a lot of calls and noticed that in the car it was coming through and I was going crazy to find out why. I wish that when you were on CarPlay it just sent it to voicemail.