If you’re mysteriously missing calls on your iPhone or Android smartphone, it could be because your line has call forwarding enabled. In that case, all your incoming calls could go somewhere else.
Call forwarding should not normally be active unless you have specifically turned it on, but another person or application may have done so without your knowledge. And since call forwarding is a carrier feature, it can still be enabled on a line you inherited from someone else, even if you swapped their SIM card with your phone or transferred it to a new account.
The good news is that it’s relatively easy to check if call forwarding is on and turn it off if necessary. Here’s everything you need to know.
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What is call forwarding?
As the name suggests, call forwarding is a feature that will forward your incoming calls to another number.
The most important thing to remember about call forwarding is that it is a network feature, not a function of your phone. This means that your iPhone or Android smartphone is not forwarding calls. Instead, once the feature is activated, calls are forwarded at the carrier level – they never reach your phone at all.
This means that when call forwarding is active on your line, you probably won’t even know that people have been trying to reach you, because they usually don’t even show up as missed calls. They are just forwarded directly to another number.
While call forwarding is a convenient way to temporarily redirect your calls to a more convenient line, it can also be enabled by other apps and services on your Android phone. For example, Google Voice and third-party phone applications may enable call forwarding to route incoming calls to those services.
This is less of an issue on the iPhone since Apple doesn’t allow third-party apps to access or control these settings or even make outgoing phone calls without first asking for permission. Despite this, apps can still walk you through setting up call forwarding, and it’s easy to forget what those steps were later.
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How to see if call forwarding is enabled on your iPhone or Android phone
You can quickly check if call forwarding is enabled on your line by looking for the icon in the status bar.
Step 1: If you’re an iPhone user, you can see if call forwarding is enabled on your line by looking for the icon next to your carrier’s name. On Touch ID and older iPhones that have a home button, this will show up in the status bar.
However, if you’re using an iPhone with Face ID, the notch or Dynamic Island doesn’t leave much room for it. Instead, you’ll need to check the iOS Control Center by swiping down from the top-right corner of the screen where the battery indicator appears.
If there is an icon with a telephone receiver and an arrow next to it, this means that call forwarding is enabled for your line. If you are using a dual-SIM, dual-line configuration, the icon will only appear next to the line(s) for which call forwarding is enabled. Your iPhone checks your carrier’s network to see if call forwarding is enabled, so this icon will appear if call forwarding is turned on for your line, regardless of how it’s activated.
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Step 2: Android phones also display a similar icon in the status bar when call forwarding is active. However, this is a dismissable notification, so its absence does not necessarily mean that call forwarding is turned off. The notification will eventually return if call forwarding remains enabled, but this may take some time as Android checks its status with the carrier network less often.
Anyway, if you’re in doubt, the following sections will show you how to explore your settings on iOS and Android to check your call forwarding status and deactivate it if necessary.
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How to turn off call forwarding on your iPhone
Call forwarding on iPhone is managed through the Settings app. Here’s where to find it and how to turn it off:
Step 1: Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
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Step 2: Scroll down and select Phone.
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Step 3: Choose Call forwarding.
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Step 4: If you have more than one line, select the line on which you want to disable call forwarding.
Step 5: If call forwarding is enabled, you will see a switch in the green “on” position and the number to which calls are forwarded next to “Forward to”.
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Step 6: Disable the feature by turning off the switch next to it Call forwarding.
Note that it may take a second or two for the call forwarding settings to appear or update because your iPhone needs to communicate with your carrier’s network to verify or change its status.
Although the “Forward to” number will disappear after the call forwarding setting is turned off, it is not gone. It is still stored by your carrier and will reappear if you turn call forwarding back on. This is handy if you regularly forward calls to the same number, but if you want to remove it completely, you’ll need to select it while call forwarding is on and delete it manually.
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How to turn off call forwarding on your Android phone
With all the different versions of Android available, some methods of managing call forwarding depend on your smartphone model. However, almost all modern versions of Android support call forwarding management through the Phone app. The steps below are for the Google Pixel running Android 14, but should be similar for most Android devices.
Step 1: Open the Phone app on your Android smartphone.
Step 2: Select the three-dot menu in the upper right corner.
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Step 3: Choose settings.
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Step 4: Choose Calls.
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Step 5: Choose Call forwarding. After a few seconds, your call forwarding settings should appear.
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Step 6: If call forwarding is enabled, you should see a note under “Always Forward” indicating “All calls forward to” and the destination phone number.
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Step 7: To disable call forwarding, select Always forward and choose Turn off from the dialog box that appears.
As with disabling call forwarding on the iPhone, the number you forwarded to here will not be deleted unless you manually delete it before turning off call forwarding. This allows you to return to this screen and easily re-enable call forwarding to the same number.
Here you can also see three other call forwarding options: When Busy, When No Answer, and When Unavailable. These are known as “conditional” or “selective” call forwarding options, and they work as their names suggest, forwarding calls only when you’re on the phone, don’t answer, or are out of network coverage. Don’t be alarmed if you see these enabled; if you subscribe to voicemail, this is how your calls are forwarded to your mailbox when you can’t answer them. Depending on your carrier, you may not be able to turn them off or change them as long as you subscribe to voicemail as part of your plan.
Call forwarding advertisement from 1967 BC. Kr
Other ways to turn off call forwarding
As mentioned earlier, call forwarding is a feature of the phone network, not your smartphone. In fact, call forwarding has been around far longer than cell phones, much less smartphones. Some landline service providers began offering call forwarding in 1967, more than a decade before the first commercially available handheld cell phone was released.
This means that the methods for managing call forwarding are several decades older than iOS and Android. Early GSM mobile phones and most feature phones today do not have fancy interfaces to manage call forwarding, relying instead on the Unstructured Supplementary Data (USSD) code features. Android calls them MMI codes, an acronym for “human-machine interface,” since it considers them part of a more comprehensive set of device-specific codes to access various test modes and other hardware features.
However, call forwarding codes work on almost all GSM operators and phones. Your smartphone uses these same codes to manage call forwarding behind the scenes, meaning you can just as easily use them yourself if you know what they are. Enter the following codes as if you were making a phone call in the Phone app, including pressing the Send button.
- *#21# to check call forwarding status. This will tell you if call forwarding is on and which number your calls are being forwarded to.
- #21# cancels call forwarding, but keeps the number you forwarded your calls to.
- \##21# cancels call forwarding and deletes the number you forwarded your calls to.
- *21# reestablishes call forwarding to the previously stored number. This will not work if you have deleted the number from ##21# or have never enabled call forwarding before.
- *21* followed by your phone number followed by # will activate call forwarding to the specified number (eg *21*14165551212#). This number will be retained until you repeat this command with a new one or use the ##21# code to delete it.
Similar GSM codes can be used for different conditional call forwarding modes, replacing 21 with 67 for busy call forwarding, 61 for missed calls and 62 when your phone is switched off or offline. Some Internet sources mistakenly list one of these other codes as forwarding all calls, but they are only used for selective forwarding.
Like trying to change these conditional call forwarding settings through the Android Phone app, you may only be able to do so if you’re not subscribed to voicemail. However, they can be useful for sending missed calls to another voicemail service, such as Google Voice or an office voicemail system.
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