Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you want to silence an incoming call on your iPhone but you don’t want to send the person directly to voicemail? Read on for the difference between silencing and declining calls on iPhone.
There are several ways to decline an iPhone call, but if you want (or need) to be a bit more subtle about how you handle things, you can silence a call without sending it directly to voicemail.
Declining a call is the easy option to reach for, but it means ending the call and sending it directly to voicemail. Silencing a call will let it ring through — the same as if you couldn’t make it to the phone — before sending a caller to voicemail.
How to silence iPhone calls without sending directly to voicemail
- Press the volume up or volume down button once
- Alternately, you can press the Side button (or Sleep/Wake button) once
- After you silence a call it will continue to ring (silently) and you can answer if you change your mind
If you want to check out three ways to decline iPhone calls, read our tutorial on that here.
For more help getting the most out of your Apple devices, check out our How-to guide as well as the following articles:
- How to restore default iPhone settings without erasing your data
- Here’s what all the iPhone status bar icons mean
- How to send iPhone calls directly to voicemail
- How to stop Apple from potentially listening to your Siri recordings
- How to set up Plex on a Synology NAS drive
- How to change Siri’s language on iPhone
- How to speed up the iPhone upgrade process in iOS 12.4 and higher
- How to repeat song or album on iOS 13
- Apple TV remote not working? Here’s how to fix it
- How to use the split bill and tip calculator features on Apple Watch in watchOS 6
