New Phone app: How to use it in iOS 26 (or get the old one back)

For the first time in 18 years, Apple redesigned the oft-overlooked Phone app. The overhaul coming soon in iOS 26 simplifies the Phone app’s layout, putting your favorites, call history and voicemails in one tab, and providing easier access to search.

Its fancy Liquid Glass-inspired layout goes hand-in-hand with the Phone app’s excellent call filtering features.

Here’s how you can learn to love the new design — and how to nope out of it if you don’t like it.

How to use Apple’s new Phone app (or get the old one back)

After the big kerfuffle over the redesigned Photos app in iOS 18, Apple is being more cautious with the new Phone app. You can choose the layout you want: the same design you’ve used since the first iPhone in 2007, or the modern approach.

Personally, I love the Phone app’s new, simplified design in iOS 26. But a lot of people just want what they’re used to. Luckily, switching to the old Phone app for a more familiar user interface is easy — and I’ll show you how.

Table of contents: How to use Apple’s new Phone app

1. Update to iOS 26
2. Switch to the new Phone app or stick to the old one
3. The new unified Calls screen
4. Add or edit your favorites
5. See your filtered calls
6. Contacts and Keypad
7. Search for a contact
8. More Phone features

Update to iOS 26

First, you need to update your iPhone to iOS 26. It’s currently available as a software update in Settings > General > Software Update at the bottom of the screen, under “Upgrade to iOS 26.” iOS 26 runs on the iPhone 11, iPhone SE 2 and later (dropping support for the iPhone XS and XR).

Switch to the new Phone app or stick to the old one

After updating to iOS 26, when you launch the Phone app, you’ll see a tip at the top of the screen asking if you’d like to switch to the new design.

If you switch accidentally, don’t worry — it’s super-easy to go back to the old-school UI. To do so, just tap the Filter button in the upper right, then tap Classic. In Classic mode, you’ll see the traditional five tabs along the bottom: Favorites, Recents, Contacts, Keypad and Voicemail.

You can tap the Filter button and switch between Classic and the new Unified mode whenever you want. Personally, I like the Phone app’s new design. It just takes a little bit of learning. Here’s how it works.

The new Phone app unified Calls screen

In the Unified design, Apple merged the Favorites, Recents and Voicemail tabs into one: Calls. The general idea is that your favorites are shown as big cards across the top, while your call history and voicemails are listed below, grouped together in one list. You don’t have to switch between as many tabs.

Add or edit your favorites

In the new Phone app, you can tap the Edit button at the top and tap Edit Favorites to put some contacts on speed dial.

Tap + in the upper right to add a new favorite from your contacts. Choose a name, then choose how you want to contact them — by text, phone call, FaceTime or email. You can add the same contact multiple times if you’d like different ways to get in touch.

Tap − next to a favorite to remove them and tap Done (the checkmark) in the upper left to save your changes.

See your filtered calls in the iPhone’s new Phone app

You may notice the new Calls screen looks really great and clean. That’s probably because it’s missing the hundreds or thousands of spam phone calls that usually clutter up the list. They’ve been pushed into the digital junk drawer.

If you want to see them, tap the Filter button in the upper right and tap Unknown Callers. You’ll see the full list of calls from unknown numbers and potential spam. You can tap Mark as Known if one of these is actually important, or Delete if you want it gone.

If you want to take out the trash, per se, there’s a trick to deleting them all. Scroll all the way to the very bottom of the list. With two fingers, swipe up and you’ll start selecting some of the items. Holding those fingers down, with your other hand, tap the clock in the upper left corner of your screen to jump to the top of the list. You will have selected everything in the list instantly. Now, tap Delete.

If you don’t want your unknown calls to be filtered out, tap the Filter button in the upper right and tap Manage Filtering. That’ll take you to the page in Settings where you can change it. In the Call Filtering section, uncheck Unknown Callers and/or Spam.

To be clear, you can leave this setting on and still receive phone calls from people outside your contacts. All this does is choose whether missed calls from people outside your contacts show up in the Recents list of the Phone app.

To change whether you receive calls from unknown numbers, scroll up a bit and choose what you want from the Screen Unknown Callers section.

Search for a contact

An advantage of the Unified design in Apple’s new Phone app is a convenient Search button at the bottom right. You can type in the name of a contact (or any of their contact details) to see filtered results.

Slightly annoyingly, when you type in the name of a contact, you’ll see their call history at the top of the list. That means that their contact card is pushed below the keyboard, which you have to swipe away first.

Nonetheless, the omnipresent Search button at the bottom is a convenient feature of the modern iOS 26 design.

More iPhone features

After learning how to use the new Phone app, check out these other incredible features:

• Set up your Contact Poster to make a beautiful custom call screen for your contact.
• Record a phone call and transcribe it in the Notes app.
• Live Voicemail lets you see a transcription of their voicemail message as it’s being recorded — and you can pick up at any point, if the call turns out to be important.
• T9 dialing lets you look up a contact from the keypad by typing in the letters associated with each number — like it’s 2004 again.