It can be frustrating to scroll through your iPhone’s Recent calls tab to find the right voicemail or to remember when you talked to someone last. But when Apple introduced iOS 18 in 2024, it included a trick that let you find calls faster in your recent call history.
That update brought a lot of new features, like customizable home screens and RCS messaging, as well as a search bar in your iPhone’s Phone app. This lets you easily search your call history and voicemails. Before iOS 18, your Phone app’s Recent calls tab was a running list of all the calls made to and from your iPhone. But now you can easily search through the list, so you aren’t needlessly scrolling.
Here’s what to know about the search function in your iPhone’s Recents tab.
Can I search recent calls on my iPhone?
Explaining why my spouse is saved in my iPhone as “El Hoppo” is a long story.
With iOS 18, yes. To search your recent calls, go to your Phone app and tap Recents across the bottom of the menu. Tap the search bar across the top of the page to open a new menu that shows the sections Calls and Voicemails. Both of these options also have the option to See All.
You can use the search bar to search for a specific contact’s name, a contact’s number or dates. For example, typing “mom” or “dad” pulls up all the phone calls and voicemails from your mom or dad, as well as their contact card. Similarly, typing “August” or “July” into the search bar pulls up all calls and voicemails from that month.
You can also type a specific date, like “July 5,” and that pulls up calls and voicemails from that particular date.
For more on iOS, here are my first impressions of the iOS 26 beta, how to enable call screening in the beta and all the other new features Apple said that update will bring to your device later this year.
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