How To Turn On Or Off Auto-Answer Calls: iPhone Edition

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It happens a lot of times when you are not able to answer an incoming call because your hands are not free, unclean or you’re simply lazy.

For such scenarios, Apple rolled out an option in iOS 11 and later by the name of Auto-Answer Calls that makes the iPhone automatically answers phone calls. Sounds useful?

Here in this tutorial, we share the steps to let you know how you can turn on or off this feature on your iPhone. The process remains the same for all iPhone models.

Apart from cellular calls, you can automatically answer calls from FaceTime and WhatsApp as well.

So, once you enable auto-answer on your iPhone, missing phone calls will be a thing of the past. Let us proceed with the procedure, then.

Also Read: Why Does iPhone Camera Flip Picture And Its Fix

Turn On/Off Auto-Answer Calls On iPhone

1. Open Settings and select General

2. Under General, tap Accessibility.

iOS Accessibility settings

3. After that select Call Audio Routing. In Call Audio Routing, tap Auto-Answer Calls.

auto answer on iPhone

4. Now, toggle the Auto-Answer Calls switch to On.

Turn On Off Auto answer calls on iPhone

5. Here comes the best part. You can even select the time to wait until the phone call is automatically answered. It is possible to choose any time duration that is in the range of 0 seconds to 60 seconds by using the + and  – buttons on the same screen. Now, the next time you receive a phone call, iPhone will automatically pick up the call after the set time duration.

6. If you are someone who is looking to turn off automatic answering then you can also follow the same steps above but toggle the Auto-Answer Calls switch to OFF in step 2. This will disable the automatic answering of phone calls on the iPhone.

During the research of this article, I found that people are also interested to know about auto-answering calls for specific contact or number only.

But unfortunately, there’s no particular option for that on the iPhone.

However, after doing extensive research for hours, I found a workaround that uses the Auto-Answer Calls feature along with the Do Not Disturb one on iPhone to auto-answer specific calls.

Enable Auto-Answer Calls For Specific Contacts

Important: Using this workaround, calls from other contacts or numbers will be blocked altogether by the Do Not Disturb feature. So, you won’t receive calls from them.

There are basically four parts to this trick:

  1. Turn on the Auto-Answer calls using the steps above.
  2. Enable the Do Not Disturb feature (DND).
  3. Allow only your Favourite contacts to call during the DND period; follow the steps below.
  4. Add specific contacts to your Favourite Contacts list by following the steps below.

Allow Only Favourite Contacts To Call Using DND

Here’s how to do that:

  1. Open the Settings on your iPhone.
  2. Now under Settings tap Do Not Disturb.
Do not disturb Settings
  1. After that, tap Allow Calls From to manually select whom you want to allow to call during the DND period.
  2. Tap Favourites and close out of the settings menu.
Allow calls from favourites

With this, you will be allowed to receive calls on your iPhone from your favorite contacts only.

How To Add A Contact To The Favourite Contacts List

If you don’t know how to list any contact as your favorite contact then you can follow the steps given below to know how actually to do it.

1. Open the phone dialer app on the iPhone. Now tap the Favorites tab at the bottom left corner. After that, tap the plus icon to add a Favourite contact.

add favourite contacts

2. Search for the contact which you want to add to the list of your favorite contacts. Once found, tap it.

3. Now, select Call to add this number as your favorite contact.

iPhone auto answer calls from specific number or contact

Similarly, you can list many contacts as your favorite contacts.

With this, your iPhone is ready to answer specific calls in auto mode. Just make sure the Auto-Answer feature is enabled on your phone.

Also ReadHow To Turn On/Off SIM PIN On iPhone

Conclusion

The possibility to do calls with Auto-Answer is a great feature offered by the iPhone to its users.

It could have been even better if they could provide a feature to automatically answer calls from selected contacts as well.

But anyhow you can still do that with the trick we have mentioned in this article. Just make sure you disable the DND feature when you are done with it. We hope that you were able to use auto-answering on your iPhone.

About The Author

  • Hemant Mendiratta

    Hemant Mendiratta is a co-founder of TechUntold and a passionate tech blogger, avid gamer, and social media guru who keenly monitors useful apps and gadgets. He is the ideator of our Instagram tool StoryHoot which allows watching Instagram stories anonymously. You can connect with him on: Facebook, Twitter.

Photo of author

Hemant Mendiratta

Hemant Mendiratta is a co-founder of TechUntold and a passionate tech blogger, avid gamer, and social media guru who keenly monitors useful apps and gadgets. He is the ideator of our Instagram tool StoryHoot which allows watching Instagram stories anonymously. You can connect with him on: Facebook, Twitter.

1 thought on “How To Turn On Or Off Auto-Answer Calls: iPhone Edition”

  1. Does it work on my 7+. General has no sub item “Accessability”. Also, there is no “Call Routing” feature under Accessibility

    Reply

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