Pixel phones are silently ignoring incoming calls

Smartphones are excellent little rectangles, keeping us connected with instant messaging, entertaining us all day long, informing us of the latest news, and so, so much more. For all they’re capable of, sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that these devices are still phones at their core. Recently, though, some Pixel owners have been struggling with basic voice calls, noticing that their handsets seem to just silently ignore incoming calls.

We’re not sure just how widespread this problem might be — it certainly doesn’t seem to be affecting every Pixel user, nor even a large fraction of them — but we’re definitely finding a few very similar reports of issues with missed voice calls, going back about a month or so.

Across Reddit’s Pixel sub and Google’s own issue tracker, we see users reporting problems on handsets like the Pixel 10 Pro, Pixel 10 Pro XL, Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro XL, Pixel 8, and even the Pixel 6a. The main shared factor of their experiences is missed calls, and that users don’t see anything on-screen at the time these calls should be coming in.

While the sudden emergence of this problem makes it feel like it could be tied to an app or system update, at least one user report of a possible fix has us hopeful that this could be stemming from a settings misconfiguration. They found success by disabling Scam Detection and Call Screen in settings for Google’s Phone app. They also speculate that Android’s Advanced Protection Mode could be at the root of this issue.

For now, though, Google has yet to share anything definitive about either causes or solutions here. We do know that the company’s aware of the problem thanks to that busy issue tracker thread, but we’re still waiting on any response.

Just last month, we shared a similar issue that seemed connected to vibration for calls, but it’s not at all clear if these are related.

If you’ve been missing calls, take a look at your own Phone app settings to see if any of those automatic filtering options may be on — and give them a toggle to see if changing them helps at all. Considering how critical voice calls can still be, even in this day and age, we hope that Google comes through with a proper fix soon.