Learn how to filter, report, and block spam messages on iPhone

If your Messages inbox is catching a lot of stray spam, we’ll show you how to filter, report, and block spam in iOS 26.

At WWDC 2025, Apple announced that it will bring improved message filtering capabilities to Messages. As promised, they were introduced as part of iOS 26, released in September 2025.

The new features are designed to help handle the onslaught of texts that everyone seems to receive these days. Here’s how to do it.

How to view messages from unknown senders on iPhone

1. OPEN News
2. Tap on Hamburger menu in the upper right corner, which looks like three horizontal lines
3. Tap Manage filtering
4. Turn it on Unknown Senders screen

If you want to enable notifications from some unknown senders – a AppleInsider suggest you do it – you can tap Enable notifications. In this subsection, you can turn on notifications for time-sensitive texts, which means that you will still receive these verification codes.

To view the messages, you will need to tap on the Hamburger menu in the upper right corner of the Messages app. Then tap on Unknown Senders to access the list of unknown senders.

How to let an unknown sender know

There will inevitably be times when you need to turn an unknown sender into a known one. Fortunately, this can be done with a few taps.

1. OPEN News
2. Tap on Hamburger menu in the upper right corner, which looks like three horizontal lines
3. Tap Unknown senders
4. Tap the message from the sender, then tap Mark as known

You can also add the sender to your contacts, which will also automatically mark the sender as a friend.

How to filter SMS, MMS and RCS messages

You can detect and filter non-iMessage based texts such as SMS, MMS and RCS messages. However, you will need to install Text Message Filter, which is a third-party app with a message filtering extension.

These are highly variable depending on your location and your career. AppleInsider suggests that you research which third-party apps and extensions are designed to work with your career in your region.

How to report spam

Reporting spam via Messages is also quite easy. Most of the time, your iPhone will accurately detect whether a message is spam and move it to your spam folder.

Spam management is easy with the Messages app

However, if not, you can mark the message as spam manually by following the steps below.

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2. If you haven’t opened the message, you can swipe left and tap on trash icon and then tap on Delete and report spam
3. If you have already opened the message, there will be a “report spam” button at the bottom.
4. Alternatively, you can tap and hold on the message to bring up the spam report window

How to recover messages sent to the Spam folder

Sometimes a message will be marked as spam even though it is not. Here’s how you can recover a mistakenly discarded message.

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2. Tap on Hamburger menu in the upper right corner, which looks like three horizontal lines
3. Tap the message you want to recover
4. Tap Not spam
5. Tap Move to Message
6. Tap on Hamburger menu
7. Tap News

If Messages is a key part of your life, knowing how to deal with spam and unwanted senders will keep it useful and fun, rather than a chore.