How to disable Voicemail on iPhone: 4 methods explained

Voicemail is a handy feature on your iPhone that allows people to leave you recorded messages when you’re unable to answer calls. However, there are times when you might want to disable voicemail for privacy reasons or to avoid spam messages. So, in this article, I’ll show you how to turn off voicemail on your iPhone so that you can better manage your communication.

Why should you disable voicemail on your iPhone?

First, let’s quickly look at why you might want to deactivate voicemail on your iPhone.

• Reduce Spam: If you receive a lot of spam or unwanted calls that leave you spammy voicemail messages, it can be helpful to deactivate voicemail to reduce this annoyance.
• Maintain Privacy: If you’re worried about privacy, turning off voicemail can be an easy way to ensure that no one can leave messages that could somehow be accessed by someone else.
• Avoid Extra Charges: Depending on your carrier’s plan, voicemail services may incur additional charges. You can avoid these by turning off voicemail altogether.
• Personal Preferences: Maybe you prefer other forms of communication, such as texts or emails, rather than calls and voicemails.
• Simplify your life: If you forget to check your voicemail, you might miss important messages. Moreover, you have to keep clearing your messages to free up storage space, which can be frustrating. So, turning voicemail off can eliminate these issues and help simplify your life.

4 ways to turn off voicemail on your iPhone

Disable voicemail Using MMI codes

MMI code, aka Man-Machine-Interface codes, allows you to communicate with your mobile service provider. Here’s how you can use these to turn off voicemail on your iPhone:

1. Launch the Phone app → Keypad tab.
2. Type ##004# and dial.
3. You’ll see a message confirming that all voicemail-related features are deactivated.
4. Tap Dismiss to exit the page.
   
   

This process turns off conditional call forwarding, which disables your Voicemail. However, some service providers don’t support ##004# as an option to turn off your Voicemail. You can check if it worked by putting your phone on Airplane Mode and giving yourself a test call from another device.

In case this method doesn’t work for you, you can try the other methods explained below.

Deactivate voicemail by contacting your carrier

Contacting and conversing with customer service can be lengthy, but this is your best bet to turn off voicemails on your iPhone. This method will permanently change and delete all saved greetings, messages, and settings on your voicemail.

You can easily search for your carrier’s contact number via Google. Below are the customer care numbers of the most popular service providers in the US. Just call your provider and inform them that you want to turn off voicemail.

Forward calls to another number

This option is for you if you don’t want to receive calls on your iPhone. It will direct all calls to another number that you specify, so you’ll never have to deal with voicemail. Follow the steps below to set up call forwarding on an iPhone.

1. Go to Settings → Phone → Call Forwarding.
2. Toggle on Call Forwarding.
3. Tap Forward To and type in the phone number to which you want to divert your calls.
4. Exit the menu to save changes.

Fill up your Mailbox

This is a clever hack to delete voicemail on your iPhone. It basically involves filling your mailbox with messages so there’s no more space for anyone else to leave you a voicemail.

Start by enabling Airplane Mode. Now call yourself from another number multiple times and leave voicemails until your mailbox gets full. The limit of voicemails may vary according to your service provider. Once your mailbox is out of storage, you’ll not be able to receive any voicemails. Goal achieved!

Bonus: Use Do Not Disturb or Silence features

This final suggestion will not turn off voicemail but will help you avoid unwanted calls. Firstly, you can turn on Do Not Disturb not to be notified of incoming calls.

• Swipe down from the top of your Home Screen to access the Control Centre.
• Tap the Focus button and then tap Do Not Disturb.

You can also ask Siri to turn Do Not Disturb on or off.

Note that this option will also silence other notifications. Check our detailed guide to learn more and customize Do Not Disturb on your iPhone.

If you don’t want to use Do Not Disturb, you can choose to silence calls only from unknown numbers.

1. Go to Settings → Phone.
2. Scroll down, tap Silence Unknown Callers, and toggle on the feature.
   
   

This will automatically silence calls from anyone not on your contact list to reduce disturbances.

Cautions when deleting Voicemail

I know voicemail can be annoying, but here are a few things to keep in mind before you turn it off. It can be a critical link to important voice messages from family, doctors, or emergency services when they cannot reach you. A voicemail message could contain important information you might need in urgent situations, so it’s a nifty feature.

Secondly, remember that if you change your service provider, voicemail will be enabled again, so you’ll have to repeat the steps to disable it if you want.

Signing off…

I hope this has helped you turn off voicemail on your iPhone. If you have questions, let me know in the comments below, and I’ll get back to you.

Facing issues with voicemail constantly? The below articles may help:

• Fixed: iPhone calls going straight to voicemail without ringing
• Voicemail not working on your iPhone? 8 quick fixes
• How to fix ‘Visual Voicemail is Currently Unavailable’ error on iPhone