Here’s how to set up voicemail on an iPhone so you can view, listen to, and organize your voicemail messages. It takes just a couple of minutes to enable.
Did you get a new iPhone or switch carriers? Then it’s time to set up your voicemail! Fortunately, setting up voicemail and visual voicemail on an iPhone is a straightforward process, and can be done in a few easy steps.
This process should work on most modern iPhones, right up to the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro. You will want to make sure that iOS is updated before you begin—do this by going to Settings > General > Software update. Once you’ve updated to the latest version of iOS 16, you should be all set.
You can even save your visual voicemail messages as notes or voice memos or share them with Apple’s built-in apps — Messages, Mail, or AirDrop.How to sign up for Visual Voicemail
Nearly every cell phone carrier supports Apple’s Visual Voicemail, even many of the smaller ones. Apple offers a full list of carriers and what features they support for your reference, but it’s safe to say you’re covered if you use any of the big carriers.
However, not every plan includes Visual Voicemail by default, and some carriers may charge extra for it. To make matters even more confusing, some carriers use the term „Visual Voicemail“ to refer to a variety of different services that also cover Android smartphones and other devices, so make sure you have iPhone Visual Voicemail set up as part of your plan. Most carriers do this automatically if you purchased your iPhone directly from them, but you may need to be more specific about your requirements if you’re bringing your own iPhone onto a new carrier.
It’s pretty easy to tell if you don’t have the correct iPhone Visual Voicemail plan, as none of the steps below will work. Instead, tapping the Voicemail button in your Phone app will simply place a call to your basic voicemail service, where you’ll need to key in your passcode and retrieve messages the old-fashioned way, using the numeric phone keypad.How to set up voicemail on your iPhone
Once you’ve subscribed to a plan with the proper iPhone Visual Voicemail service, it’s easy to set up voicemail on your iPhone. Here’s how to proceed:
Step 1: Open the Phone app, which is located at the bottom of your iPhone home screen by default.
Step 2: Tap the Voicemail button in the bottom-right corner. This is also how you will access your voicemail messages once everything has been set up.
Step 3: This should bring you to a screen with instructions on how to set up Visual Voicemail with a Set up now button in the center. If this shows a Call voicemail button instead, or automatically dials your voicemail service and shows you a numeric keypad, you haven’t properly subscribed to Visual Voicemail. In this case, you’ll need to contact your carrier to help you get the correct service added to your plan.
Step 4: Tap Set up now to begin configuring your Visual Voicemail service.
Step 5: When prompted, enter a passcode for your voicemail service. This passcode will be needed if you ever want to access your voicemail messages from another phone, or if your iPhone can’t access the Visual Voicemail service, such as when you have no data coverage.
Step 6: After you’ve selected a passcode and confirmed it, it’s time to select how you would like callers to be greeted when they reach your voicemail. Select Default to use the standard visual voicemail greeting, or Custom to record a message of your own.
Step 7: If you choose to use a custom greeting, tap the Record button to begin recording your greeting. Tap Stop when finished. Tap Play to listen to your greeting, or Record to erase the previous recording and try again.
Step 8: When satisfied with your greeting, tap Save.How to listen to Visual Voicemail messages on your iPhone
Once Visual Voicemail has been configured, new voicemail messages will appear in the Phone app in much the same way that emails appear in your Inbox. You’ll be able to see a full list of all of the voicemail messages that you’ve received, including the date and time, who they’re from, and their length.
