iPhone not blocking calls/emails/voicemails after iOS 26.4

I updated to latest 26.6 and unblocked all my blocked numbers and for now there blocking again

Same issue on iPhone 15 Pro Max, 12 Pro Max AND MacBook Pro all updated to iOS 26.4 / macOS 26.4. After the blocking attempt, menu displays “Unblock Caller/Contact”, but on exit, no 🚫 icon displays & on retry attempt, menu has reset back to “Block this caller/Contact”…

My older iPhones/iPad don’t have this problem & still block the caller or contact, displaying the 🚫 icon, & menu correctly displays “Unblock this Caller/Contact” on reentry. Definitely a bug 🐜

tmmdg: Great description of the problem --my experience exactly. No success with signing in and out of Apple ID; hard restart; toggling on/off airplane mode; toggling airplane mode off, hard restart, toggling back on; resetting network settings.

Additional observations:

-After trying unsuccessfully to block numbers, I looked in blocked contacts list and confirmed they were not there. That shows the problem is not just the absence of the expected 🚫, and "Unblock" option, the entire blocking process fails.

-Contact blocking works on my iPad, except the ability to select multiple messages and block all their contacts at once. The "block X# senders" option is now missing --each contact has to be blocked individually. Hopefully a thing which will be resolved, not an intentional removal of the option.

This is not a work-around for blocking contacts on iphone. Blocked contact lists are device-specific, and can't be downloaded, copied, shared, etc.

This is not a trivial problem for those of us who receive a lot of spam texts, emails, and phone calls from unknown entities (50-80 total a day -- 20-35 in texts alone). Changing phone number and email addresses I've had for 20+ years is a hard NO. Replying "STOP" or "UNSUBSCRIBE" serves only to confirm to senders that recipients' numbers or email addresses are legit and active. Blocking and reporting senders -at the very least- stops spam from those numbers and email addresses. It's worth the few extra steps. Since updating to ios/ipados 26.4, more spam is getting through --IMO, due to repeated messages being sent from the numbers and email addresses I would have blocked after their first messages.

On 05.13.26 I had a support session call with a live person. After going through all of the troubleshooting steps, the problem was not resolved (not unexpected). The support agent told me this is a known issue which is being worked on. Good news! Hopefully no more "no one else has that problem", or "have you tried..." this, that, or myriad things we've all tried. As soon as there is a fix it will be included in an update.

I setup “Blocked 1” in my contacts and will add spam numbers to that blocked contact until I max it out (500 numbers per contact). I’ll create new “Blocked #” contacts when I fill the first one up. It’s not perfect but it bypasses any stupid limits Apple has come up with for blocking spammers.

[Edited by Moderator]

Odd, 26.4.1 fixed the issue on mine.

Have you updated your iPhone to 26.5? My BLOCK CONTACT button works on spam/junk emails

After the Apple iOS update, the blocking feature likely still works but the indicators have changed, so you should verify it in the blocked contacts list or with a test number.

[Edited by Moderator]

See the pic below about Classic and Unified View

• iOS 26 and higher versions have two views in the Phone App in the Recents tab
• Use the classic view to block callers. Tap the More Info button  next to the name of the Contact in the Recent list of calls.

It appears that there are now limitations on the maximum number of blocked calls that are allowed. After starting from scratch the function stopped working once I got to 3000 blocked calls. I’m not sure if this will be addressed in future updates.

So when I called support because I could no longer block any numbers, they told me there is a limit to how many numbers/emails you can have blocked but they don’t know what that number is. I say that’s crazy. But I had 6100. I am down to just over 5500 and still can’t block. So I am slowly unblocking EVERY number and email so I am down to ZERO. They have got to fix it to where you can unblock multiple at once instead of one at a time. It is going to take hours to unblock them all. So that is now why you can’t block any longer. So good luck everyone. Start unblocking all those numbers and start fresh because this is terrible now.

I did this and it worked!!! I now have about 250 blocked numbers on ONE blocked name AKA SPAM, and I keep adding numbers to block to this ONE blocked number until I reach my 500 numbers PER that contact.... then I'll just create a 2nd blocked name AKA SPAM's cousin, then I'll just add 500 spam numbers to the cousin's blocked number, and so on and so forth until I'll probably get SPAM's aunts, uncles, 3rd cousins, neighbors and all their friends and cousins. THANK YOU Ipad 3 expert!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU ROCK!!!!!

Same exact thing that is happening with my phone. It was not an issue for 10 years, updated to 26.4, and boom… Tons of Spam showing up in the inbox that usually would automatically be deleted based on the blocked sender rule.

Apple support was useless yesterday… The engineers asked the same questions I had already answered. Hoping to get more insight on Friday.

I began having this issue after 26.4 but only with unwanted solicitation TEXTS from “toll free” 8XX- numbers. I could not block them from the Messages app by tapping their number bubble at the top as I always had been able to before.

Sadly, 26.4.1 did not fix this problem for my phone, though. (Nonissues blocking actual callers…only texters.) So o have been having to “Create a New Contact” and save it then block the number from within my phone app as you would a caller in your contacts list, and then also delete the contact. This is so annoying and a waste of my time with all those steps.

vancefromkentland wrote:

Unblocking numbers take a looong time, they have to be done 1 at a time, not sure who the fool was that did that instead of being able to unblock many by swiping up or down.

You have a Mac, at least according to your previous post about pairing on a Mac, so all you need to do is go to Mail > Settings > Junk Mail > Blocked, and delete them all there. As long as they are using the same Apple Account they will be synced and deleted on that device as well.

Bulk deleting has always been an option on the Mac where it has not on the iPhone just like many other features. Use the provided Feedback link for a Feature Request on the iPhone, it would not be that difficult to implement with either a Clear All button or multiple selections like done in Messages/Mail. It has only been a topic of discussion in the last couple of weeks with the added message notifying you that the limit has been reached and nobody seemed to care before then, so send in that feedback now.

Feedback - iPhone - Apple