Phone tips for iPhone users:

Keypad

I keep hearing about people's frustration when they get one of those automated phone systems that require a number to be pressed in order to verify that a human has answered the call. I once had this problem as well, but I have solved it.

If you have an iPhone you can easily ensure that the phone keypad is shown on the screen every time you receive a call.

  1. Open the Settings app.

  2. swipe down to Phone and open it.

  3. Open the option called "Incoming Calls ..."

  4. Select "Full Screen"

Now when you answer a call and then pull the phone away from your ear the phone keypad and other controls will be shown on the screen.

If you keep the Incoming Calls setting on Banner, then, after answering the call, it is necessary to open the phone controls from the small banner at the top of the screen where the status bar usually is. This is impossible if you are a VoiceOver user, because putting your fingers near the top of the phone when on a call switches the call and Voiceover to the very quiet phone speaker. Then VoiceOver can't be heard, so it is no longer possible to find anything on the screen.

Sighted iPhone users seem to only have very slightly more success finding and identifying which buttons they need to press. I suspect it is because the buttons are small and everyone gets somewhat stressed by having to quickly react to what the call is asking them to do. That is why I recommend this setting change to everyone.

If you are unwilling to have incoming calls take over your whole screen every time you get a call, then I recommend remembering the full-screen setting exists so you can go quickly switch it on whenever an important call-back or verification call is expected.

It might seem like you could just open the Phone app and select the Keypad tab whenever you expect one of these calls, but it won't work. The Phone app's keypad is completely separate from the keypad of an active incoming call. The only cool thing about this is that you can open the Phone app when on a call and actually dial a number you are being given by whoever you are talking to. After you hang up the current call, you can just activate the Call button to connect to the new number.

If you have answered a call and find that you no longer want the keypad on the screen you can activate the Hide Keypad button. That will provide access to Mute and several other buttons related to the current phone call. The keypad will be shown again the next time you receive a call, so no need to reenable it.

In order to interact with an app other than the phone when on a call you can just use the method you would usually use to get to the Home screen. Press the Home button if your phone has one. Swipe up from the bottom of the screen with 1 finger if it does not.

Hearing Call and VoiceOver Audio

For VoiceOver users there is a setting called Auto-select Speaker in Call, which should be switched to on. That is the setting responsible for automatically switching to the speaker when not holding your iPhone to your ear during audio only calls. This setting can be found by asking Siri to open Voiceover settings. Once opened swipe right until you find Audio and double tap to open it. Swipe right until you find Auto-select Speaker in Call. It should be on by default.

If pulling the phone away from your ear still does not work, then your phone case might be blocking the light sensor. If that is the case, you might want to get a different case. Otherwise you will have to change the default behavior in Settings and that may or may not give satisfactory results.

To set where call audio will be sent:

Open Settings,

Accessibility,

Touch,

Call Audio Routing.

The options are Automatic, Speaker, or Bluetooth Headset.

I have tried to figure out how switching audio from speaker phone to phone and vise versa works when VoiceOver isn't causing it to happen automatically, but I cannot find the buttons that should be present on the screen to make that happen. Maybe a sighted iPhone user will enlighten me about that some day. Right now I don't know anyone who seems to know how to do it efficiently.

Of course the volume buttons on the side of the phone will increase or decrease call volume when pressed. Remember that the volume of what the person on the other end of the call hears is not at all affected by the volume you hear on your end. They are also likely to hear people and things in the background wether or not they can be heard on speaker. The speaker phone and volume settings are only there to affect what you hear. The software of the phone will deal with making sure you can be heard. Not even talking louder is likely to work better. Just make sure your fingers or other things aren't covering the little holes at the bottom of the phone.

If you use VoiceOver you might find that you at times can not hear the call because VoiceOver is yelling, or cannot hear VoiceOver because the automated system asking you to press a button is so busy impatiently yelling at you that you can't hear VoiceOver to find the numbers. Sometimes that can be improved by changing VoiceOver's volume.

In order to change VoiceOver volume it will need to be on the rotor. Enable Volume on the rotor by asking Siri to open VoiceOver Settings.

Swipe right until you hear Rotor, then double tap it.

Double tap Rotor Items.

Swipe through the long list of items that can be on the Rotor until you find Volume.

If Volume is not already selected, double tap it.

Once Volume is on your VoiceOver Rotor you can turn the Rotor to Volume by twisting 2 fingers on the screen until you hear the desired option.

Swipe up to turn the VoiceOver volume up, and swipe down to turn it down.

Silencing Calls

There seems to be a lot of people who do not know how to make their phones be quiet unless they completely turn them off. That is an absolutely ridiculous and unnecessary thing to do with iPhones. Of course, the majority of disturbing phones I hear when they shouldn't be heard are Samsung phones, so maybe iPhone owners already have this info down pat. Here it is just in case you don't know it yet.

All iPhones except the new iPhone 15 have a little slider on the left side of the device. It is near the top above the volume buttons. When the slider is in the up position, meaning towards the screen, it is on ring. When it is in the down position, meaning toward the back of the phone, it is on silent. When switched to silent you will feel the phone give a distinctive pattern of vibrations to indicate that. Switching it back up to ring will not cause any vibration. That means you don't even have to look at your phone or get it out of a pocket to get it set correctly. When on mute your iPhone will not ring for incoming calls, or make a noise to alert you to incoming messages. Most other notifications are also silenced.

Whether or not your iPhone vibrates to alert you to all these types of notifications is something that can be set up in Settings > Sounds & Haptics. This is also the place where you can decide whether the volume buttons affect the volume of the ringtone and notifications. I strongly discourage setting the phone so that the volume buttons affect the ringtone and alerts. It is far too easy to make those tones too loud or too quiet to be heard just because you wanted the volume of some other audio to be different. This is even more important for VoiceOver users who will find they need to change the volume all the time.

It is very important to know that alarms are not silenced by the mute button. Yes, this can be embarrassing, but i believe it was the correct design decision. After all, you very well might want calls and notifications to be silenced when you are sleeping, but not having your alarm make a sound in the morning would be counterproductive.

The silent/ring switch also does not affect the playing of any type of media.

Instantly Silence calls

What about those calls you don't actually want but didn't silence or block? Instantly silence the ringing by pressing the Volume Down button. It is the button closest to you on the left side of the phone when you are holding the phone in the most typical usage position it only takes 1 press to do the job. The call will not be rejected, so you can still decide whether or not to answer. The noise will just be stopped.

This is true for all cellphones I know about including those running various Android versions.

This also works for instantly silencing alarms.

Pressing the volume down button once will only turn down music, videos, or other media. It will not turn off the audio completely. For that you will have to hit the Volume Down button repeatedly.

The Lock Button and calls

Does the lock button hang-up phone calls? The answer is: it depends.

There is a setting in the Settings app in Accessibility > Touch that changes the behavior of the Lock button. It is "Prevent Lock to End Call" and when it is on it prevents the side button from ending the current call. I believe the default for this setting is off, so if you have not changed this setting your phone probably will hang-up if you Lock the screen.

I prefer this setting to be on, because I lock my screen when on calls all the time. It saves battery and prevents me from hitting buttons when I don't mean to.

VoiceOver Majic Tap

The gesture Apple refers to as Majic Tap is extremely useful. Tap anywhere on the screen with 2 fingers twice quickly. This will answer incoming calls without having to find any specific buttons. I often answer calls before I even know which side up the phone is.

VoiceOver users can also use that same Majic Tap--double tap with 2 fingers--to hang-up a call, so no easy button for doing so is really necessary. Of course, the screen has to be on, not locked, for the 2 finger double tap to register.

I'm sorry that the Majic Tap gesture isn't available to everyone. I think it should be.

Note that although the Majic Tap is the answer and hang-up gesture for FaceTime as well as regular phone calls, it is not that for Zoom. It is Mute/Unmute when in the Zoom ap.