Why is my iPhone silencing calls?

FIRST: Are there missed calls in Phone/Recents on the phone? If they are not the problem is in the network, because the calls aren’t getting to your phone. Contact your carrier: 

• check with your carrier that they don’t have a local outage, and that you didn’t have any settings that would have immediately invoked voicemail, such as call forwarding.
• check up on them at Down Detector - outages

If they are in Recents here’s what to check:

• Check the MUTE switch on the left side of the phone, above the volume buttons. It should be towards the screen
• Check the volume setting. With the Home screen displayed, press the VOLUME UP button on the left side of the phone. It’s above the VOLUME DOWN button.
• Go to Settings/Phone. There’s a switch for Silence Unknown Callers. If it is on any calls from numbers not in your contacts will go directly to voicemail.
• Also in Settings/Phone: Make sure Call Forwarding is off.
• iOS 14 & older: Go to Settings/Do not Disturb. Turn it off if it is on. Also turn off Scheduled. With both off none of the other switches there matter.
• iOS 15 or later: Go to Settings/Focus, and verify that all focus settings are disabled.
• Go to Settings/Sounds & Haptics. Make sure there is a sound assigned to Ringtone.
• Go to Settings/Accessibility/Touch/Call Audio Routing and make sure Auto-Answer Calls is off.
• Go to Settings/Screen Time/Communications Limits. Tap each of the 2 entries and make sure both are “Everyone"
• Restart your phone-->RESTART your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support
• If all else fails, talk your carrier into replacing your SIM card (thanks to ASC user DShelbyD)

I found a switch under “Phone” (about the 16th button down) that somehow got switched on that will “Silence Unknown Callers”. Once you expand the phone button look in the “Calls” section.

Hummingbirdsfly wrote:

I am having the same issue and I’ve missed important calls from office. I’m a nurse and those calls are to see patients. Time is of essence in patient care. I’ve tried everything the same as you have. Thank you for bringing issue up. Hope it can get resolved.

FIRST: Are the missed calls in Phone/Recents on the phone? If they are not the problem is in the network, because the calls aren’t getting to your phone. Contact your carrier: 

• check with your carrier that they don’t have a local outage, and that you didn’t have any settings that would have immediately invoked voicemail
• check up on them at Down Detector - outages

If they are in Recents here’s what to check:

• Check the MUTE switch on the left side of the phone, above the volume buttons. It should be towards the screen
• Check the volume setting. With the Home screen displayed, press the VOLUME UP button on the left side of the phone. It’s above the VOLUME DOWN button.
• Go to Settings/Do not Disturb. Turn it off if it is on. Also turn off Scheduled. With both off none of the other switches there matter.
• Go to Settings/Phone. There’s a switch for Silence Unknown Callers. If it is on any calls from numbers not in your contacts will go directly to voicemail.
• Also in Settings/Phone: Make sure Call Forwarding is off.
• Go to Settings/Sounds & Haptics. Make sure there is a sound assigned to Ringtone.
• Go to Settings/Screen Time/Communications Limits. Tap each of the 2 entries and make sure both are “Everyone"
• Restart your phone-->RESTART your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support

FIRST: Are the missed calls in Phone/Recents on the phone? If they are not the problem is in the network, because the calls aren’t getting to your phone. Contact your carrier: 

• check with your carrier that they don’t have a local outage, and that you didn’t have any settings that would have immediately invoked voicemail
• check up on them at Down Detector - outages

If they are in Recents here’s what to check:

• Check the MUTE switch on the left side of the phone, above the volume buttons. It should be towards the screen
• Check the volume setting. With the Home screen displayed, press the VOLUME UP button on the left side of the phone. It’s above the VOLUME DOWN button.
• Go to Settings/Do not Disturb. Turn it off if it is on. Also turn off Scheduled. With both off none of the other switches there matter.
• Go to Settings/Phone. There’s a switch for Silence Unknown Callers. If it is on any calls from numbers not in your contacts will go directly to voicemail.
• Also in Settings/Phone: Make sure Call Forwarding is off.
• Go to Settings/Sounds & Haptics. Make sure there is a sound assigned to Ringtone.
• Go to Settings/Screen Time/Communications Limits. Tap each of the 2 entries and make sure both are “Everyone"
• Restart your phone-->RESTART your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Supportyour 
• If all else fails, talk your carrier into replacing your SIM card (thanks to ASC user DShelbyD)

The answer for me was to go into settings scroll all the way down to “phone”

then look for the “silence unknown callers” and toggle that off

mine was on so all calls that were not in my contact list got silenced

I had the same problem and didn’t see the correct fix in the suggestions so I looked around and realized that if I went to “settings; scroll down to “Phone”; and then scroll down to “Silence Unknown Callers” it showed that is was on so I tapped “on” and selected “Off”. That should fix it!

You can’t have it both ways. If you turn on Silence Unknown Callers to avoid spam calls the phone has no way of distinguishing spam calls from legitimate calls that are not in your contacts. So you will have to leave Silence Unknown Callers turned off. But there are other things you can do about spam calls.

First, see if your carrier has a filtering app that will attempt to recognize spam calls; my carrier, AT&T has the “Call Protect” app and it’s pretty effective at identifying spam calls, displaying “Spam Risk” for suspect calls. I can also submit numbers to be blocked to it, which is better than the iPhone’s blocking feature, because the calls are blocked at the network and don’t make it to your voicemail.

There are also apps that can recognize spam calls based on crowd-sourced reports and block them. The original of these (and probably still the best) is Nomorobo.

Try “Sounds and Haptics” in settings. I had the same issue even though my volume using side buttons was at maximum. When I went into this menu the ringer was at zero (???) and “change with buttons” was off. I had no recollection of changing this setting before as well. But try moving the ringer slider to your desired ring tone volume and see if that fixes the issue for you? Good luck!

I had the same problems. Frustrating to find the right answer. I checked You-Tube and this helped me right away.

Here is the link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3GFP_9tz0M

Here is what the video said to check:

Settings->Phone->scroll down to "Silence Unknown callers" and make sure this control is in the OFF position.

FIRST: Are the missed calls in Phone/Recents on the phone? If they are not the problem is in the network, because the calls aren’t getting to your phone. Contact your carrier: 

• check with your carrier that they don’t have a local outage, and that you didn’t have any settings that would have immediately invoked voicemail
• check up on them at Down Detector - outages

If they are in Recents here’s what to check:

• Check the MUTE switch on the left side of the phone, above the volume buttons. It should be towards the screen
• Check the volume setting. With the Home screen displayed, press the VOLUME UP button on the left side of the phone. It’s above the VOLUME DOWN button.
• Go to Settings/Do not Disturb. Turn it off if it is on. Also turn off Scheduled. With both off none of the other switches there matter.
• Go to Settings/Phone. There’s a switch for Silence Unknown Callers. If it is on any calls from numbers not in your contacts will go directly to voicemail.
• Also in Settings/Phone: Make sure Call Forwarding is off.
• Go to Settings/Sounds & Haptics. Make sure there is a sound assigned to Ringtone.
• Go to Settings/Screen Time/Communications Limits. Tap each of the 2 entries and make sure both are “Everyone"
• Restart your phone-->RESTART your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support
• If all else fails, talk your carrier into replacing your SIM card (thanks to ASC user DShelbyD)

If everything is perfectly fine, then check for the following setting:

Settings ➤ Phone ➤ Silence Unknown Callers ➤ make sure it's toggled off.

Additionally, if nothing seems to work then try force restarting your iPhone a couple of times. If that still doesn't work, contact Apple Support.

Moreover, the image which you've attached regarding Do Not Disturb doesn't have a problem. It'll remain checked and only works when you turn on Do Not Disturb. Once you turn it on, then you can decide whether to Silence it 'Always' or 'While iPhone is locked. It doesn't have to do anything when Do Not Disturb is turned off.

Hope this helps you out.

Try to switch off: Phone - Wi-fi Calling

Worked for me

Open the Health app. You can set up a sleep schedule. If you do one of the options is to silence the phone. If you don’t use this feature it is not relevant.

Yes!!! Thank you!! It was the mute button above the volume buttons. Didn’t even know it was there!!! You are awesome!!

I had this problem too. Try Settings>Phone>Silence Unknown Callers then select "off"