How to Stop and Block Spam or Unwanted Calls on Your Android Phone.

June 30, 2025

Woman receiving message to reset password on her device

Android offers robust built-in features and apps to help you block those unwanted calls and reclaim your peace. We will walk you through everything you need to know about how to stop unwanted calls on your Android device, helping you block those pesky spammers.

How to block spam calls on Android.

Android offers multiple ways to block spam calls, including manual blocking, marking calls as spam, caller ID and spam protection features. These are simple ways to protect yourself and stop these annoying callers in their tracks, after or even before they reach you.

Manual blocking.

This is the easiest and most direct way to protect yourself from unwanted calls. Just select the number that is bothering you and manually block it. To do so:

  1. Go into your call history.
  2. Select the number you want to block.
  3. Choose the “Block” option.

Marking calls as spam.

You’ll also see the option to report the number as spam during the blocking process. By marking calls as spam, you can help us in improving spam detection and protect other users. To mark calls as spam, follow these steps:

  1. Access your call history.
  2. Select the spam call.
  3. Choose the “Report spam” option.

Tip: Reporting spam is important for community protection, so we recommend you always do this.

You can also silence unknown or private numbers on Android, which acts as a pre-screening for potential spam calls. To enable this feature, you just need to select “Block unknown/private numbers” on your phone’s settings.

This will prevent these types of numbers from ringing your phone, but you can still see the missed calls on your history. Calls that you receive from numbers that are not on your contact list will not be affected by this feature.

Verify or share caller ID.

With the verify or share caller ID feature, you can now check and share information about businesses that call you. This feature is great for helping others to learn more about the business or institution calling them. You might include information such as a business name or category, that can be displayed on incoming calls.

To verify or suggest a new caller ID, follow these steps:

  1. Open the Phone app
  2. Tap “Recents”
  3. Tap “Was this a business?” or “Caller ID feedback”, then follow the instructions
  4. Tap “Submit”

You can also change your selection after you submit your feedback.

  1. In the “Recents” tab, touch and hold the call you want
  2. Select “Send feedback”

Built-in features to stop spam calls on Android.

Android-powered phones have built-in features like caller ID, spam protection and Call Screen to help you filter and block unwanted calls. These features are great for protecting you from spam or unwanted calls, so we recommend you use them to enhance your experience on Android phones.

Caller ID and spam protection.

Both caller ID and spam protection features give you an extra layer of information before you answer a call, including warnings about potential spam callers. These two features are on by default, but you can toggle them on or off by following these steps:

  1. Access the Phone app settings.
  2. Find the “Caller ID & Spam” option.
  3. Turn on or off “See caller ID” and “Filter spam calls.”
  4. This feature identifies business callers and potential spam based on data sent to Google, but your contacts aren’t shared.

Caller ID announcement.

This feature announces a caller's name or number and helps you identify calls without looking at your phone.

To turn this feature on, follow these steps:

  1. Open the Phone app
  2. Tap “More options”, then “Settings”, “Caller ID announcement” and finally “Announce caller ID”
  3. There are three options for announcing caller ID: always, only with a headset, or never. Choose the setting that works best for you.

Call Screen.

Sometimes, you need to know the caller's intentions before picking up the phone. Maybe you are too busy to answer or concerned it might be spam or a scam call. Call Screen1 can be activated automatically on unknown numbers or manually, with you selecting when to screen a call.

The feature allows you to send one of many selected messages for screening, such as “Who is this?” or “Is this urgent?”, and transcribes the caller’s response in real time. Based on the transcription, you can answer the call, hang up or mark it as spam.

To turn on Call Screen automatically, follow these steps:

  1. Open the Phone app.
  2. Tap More > Settings > Spam and Call Screen
  3. Tap Call Screen.
  4. Select your protection level.

To screen calls manually, follow these steps:

  1. When you get a call, tap screen call.
  2. Your Call Assist screens the call and asks who's calling and why.
  3. You'll get a real-time transcript of how the caller responds.
  4. Once the caller responds, you can choose a suggested response, pick up the call or hang up.

So let’s look at an example of how that could look like during the call:

Selected response: “I'll call you back”

Caller might hear: “They can’t talk right now, but they'll give you a call later. Thanks, and goodbye.”

Woman receiving message to reset password on her device

Is there a way to permanently stop spam calls?

While you can’t completely eliminate spam calls, you can effectively manage and reduce them by consistently blocking and reporting. By doing this every time you are contacted, you will not only reduce your issues with spam callers, but also for the whole Android ecosystem, as the data helps us build better features to stop these calls before they reach you.

Here are some additional steps you can take to reduce your experiences with spam calls, but also to help build our spam detection tools:

  • Consistently block and report spam calls. This helps improve the overall spam detection algorithms. The more reports, the better the algorithms get.
  • Regularly review your blocked numbers list and remove any legitimate contacts that may have been accidentally blocked.
  • Keep your Android operating system and Google Phone app updated to ensure you have the latest spam protection features. Updates often include improvements to spam detection.

With Android’s powerful built-in features and the Google Phone app, you can take control and significantly reduce the number of spam calls you receive. By actively using these tools and reporting spam numbers, you’re protecting yourself and contributing to a better and safer mobile experience for everyone.

Footnotes:

1. You can screen calls automatically on all Pixel phones in the US. For the full list of countries where you can do this manually, see https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/9118387?hl=en-GB