Why is my iPhone silencing calls?

Settings - silence Unknown callers

that was my issue.

• Check BedTime Status - Clock App; Use Bedtime to track your sleep on your iPhone - Apple Support
• Check your Sound Volume; Adjust the volume on iPhone - Apple Support
• Check your Ringer switch; If you hear no sound or distorted sound from your iPhone, iPad, or ...
• Check Call Audio Routing; Call Audio Routing Bluetooth / Speaker / Automatic
• Check Auto Answer Calls; Turn off Auto Answer Calls
• Check Connection with Bluetooth Audio; Stream audio from iPhone to your hearing devices - Apple Support
• Check whether in Headset Mode; If your iPhone is stuck in headphone mode - 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 Support

As you didn’t bother to read any of the thread you posted to, the most likely reason is you have Silence Unknown Callers ON in Settings/Phone.

If that doesn’t solve it go back and read some of the thread.

Man this was so frustrating to fix on my end.

My problem turned out to be that the silent switch on the iPhone was broken the whole time. The phone was muted because of this and did not unmute even if I flicked the switch up. Took me a while to figure this out.

Based on internet suggestions…I turned on Assistive Touch and found the mute toggle to unmute my phone. Hope this helps for the small number of people who encounter the same issue as I did.

In newer updates of iOS , the setting is called “silence unknown callers” and it lives outside of do not disturb. Just pull down your settings menu to get to search and type that in. This has caused me so much pain and missed calls from bills etc and people thinking I’m “hard to get ahold of.” I thought it was something in my do not disturb settings and changed things there, but the whole time it’s a whole hidden setting iphone never asked me to activate or suggested. There is also a weird setting that automatically calls back missed calls. Forgot where that is but I found it in help here,

This resolved my problem. With all the spam calls I made the decision to turn ON the “Silence Unknown Callers”. That was a mistake. It silenced “good” unknown callers as well as the bad. Guess I need to suffer all the Spam in order to get the helpful.

I looked and sure enough my silence u known callers was on so I turned it off and now it works. I was missing calls from my doctors. Also my vm didn’t work and I had to fix that too. My calls weren’t being forwarded.

Thanks for all your help

Turns out is was due to the new update

settings needed to be changed on

‘do not disturb’ now called ‘Focus’

all sorted now

Under Phone in settings you may have switched on 'Silence Unknown Callers'

I had "Block unknown callers" turned on, and that was my problem.

Under Settings > Phone there is an option to silence unknown callers. Check if it’s turned on.

Go to Settings>Phone>Silence Unknown Callers and turn it off.

Silence Unknown Callers BY DESIGN blocks calls from all numbers not in your contacts, not just numbers that your carrier labels as Unknown. I realize that isn’t obvious from the label, but that’s the way it works. Nomorobo will not block calls from your contacts, assuming you give the app permission to see your contacts. You might have to do that with RoboKiller also, but I am not familiar with it, I only use Nomorobo and Call Protect.

There is an explanation under the switch setting that explains exactly what it does; that it only allows calls in your contacts to ring. But who reads fine print?

None of the suggestions helped and thanks God I didn’t do the suggested phone reset when I didn’t have to to fix the problem on my particular iPhone.

This update from a premium brand as Apple has created some very unpleasant difficulties, one of them being the silencing of incoming calls.

Looks like there are umpteen places under Settings where this update has caused Call Silencing. From reading all the comments and suggestions the biggest hurdle is not knowing what setting is causing this, it’s different on different phones and hence the fixes vary too.

What helped me fix the problem for my iphone was, with all due respect, not the list provided by two Level10 members nor any of the solutions in other replies, some of which worked for others.

So this update had automatically changed my Settings>Phone>Announce Calls> NEVER (!!!!) (I’ve attached the screenshot)

I changed ‘Never’ to ‘Always’, which is what it ought to have been by default !

I have to move on now to find a thread on why my keyboard diction microphone won’t type anything since this update. God knows what other little things have gone awry.