With iOS 18 there are now five ways for a caller to be blocked/silenced:
- the caller can be blocked via the Live Caller ID extension
- the caller can be blocked via the Call Kit extension
- the caller can be blocked via Block Caller via the call history recents
- the call could be silenced via Silence Junk Callers
- the call could be silenced via Silence Unknown Callers
These are all totally separate and there's no way of reconciling all of them and presenting a holistic overview and management system to the user.
Call blocking applications have no way of knowing which numbers will be blocked by 3) or silenced by 4) or 5), or even of determining 4) and 5) are enabled. And iOS doesn't indicate to users what will be blocked by 1) or 2).
Currently users have no way of knowing what's been blocked/silenced where. Neither via call blocking apps nor via the OS.
From users' perspectives its a confusing and frustrating mess.
If the OS exposed which numbers have been blocked via 3) to applications and exposed if Silence Unknown Callers and Silence Junk Callers are enabled then call blocking applications could present a unified way for users to see and manage what's going on with their device holistically.
These are all totally separate and there's no way of reconciling all of them and presenting a holistic overview and management system to the user.
Yes. Over time, the system has created a number of different APIs in this area and the combination of them can be difficult to reconcile. Some of the expectation here is that there is less overlap in the API than might be apparent. For example, CXCallDirectory was primarily designed to support special purpose identifications (for example, a companies employee directory) with relatively limited support for blocking. By contrast, LiveCallerID is far more complicated to implement than CXCallDirectory but it's also far more scaleable, making it a much better option for broader call blocking.
If the OS exposed which numbers have been blocked via 3) to applications and exposed if Silence Unknown Callers and Silence Junk Callers are enabled then call blocking applications could present a unified way for users to see and manage what's going on with their device holistically.
I can't comment on our future development plans, so all I can recommend here is that you file an enhancement request describing what you'd like us to do in the future.
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Kevin Elliott
DTS Engineer, CoreOS/Hardware
