How to increase/decrease the time your iPhone rings before diverting to voicemail

The iPhone supports ringtone of up to 30 seconds, but most networks will divert to voicemail before you gets a chance to hear the full ringtone.

The way around this is to instruct your network to increase the delay before a caller is sent to voicemail:

  1. Via the Phone app, enter *#61# and press Call.
  2. Write down the message that appears after “Forwards to”. This is your voicemail access number.
  3. Now dial **61*xxx*11*y# (where xxx is your voicemail access number and y is the number of seconds before the call should be sent to voicemail – this must be a multiple of 5 seconds) and press Call.

I have tested this tip on an iPhone 3GS on Orange and an iPhone 4 on O2, but it should work on all phones and networks as it’s a standard GSM feature.

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    6 comments on “How to increase/decrease the time your iPhone rings before diverting to voicemail

    1. Jon Hagel says:

      This does not work on an Iphone 4s supported by Verizon. When I enter *#61# touch call. A recorded voice answers. Help! A callers phone rings 8 times before it goes to vm. When my conditional call forwarding is on and my coworker attempts to answer it, the callers phone may ring 11 times. No one waits that long. I did a test and found that a caller to me will hear their phone ring twice before my iphone evens rings once. It takes 30 seconds for a call to go to vm. I want it to 10 or 15 seconds. Thanks alot!

    2. Andrew says:

      Many thanks for this; it works on an iPhone 4 on TMobile

    3. Sally says:

      Thanks so much, solved the problem of never finding my phone in my bag before it went to voicemail! Works on an iPhone 4.

    4. Bassem says:

      Many thanks for this tip. I implemented it on iPhone 4S and it works – at least for now. I made a similar adjustment using a different code before, and after a few days the phone reverted to a short ring.

    5. Iain says:

      Just tried this on my 4s and works perfectly. Finally got rid of that ridiculous short ring before going to voicemail

    6. Narada says:

      Thanks so much for this Chris. I must have gone through about 20 links before I came across your page which was the only one that explained how to look up the voicemail number and that it is should the voicemail number that goes into the final code not the mobile number. Thanks again. Only a developer (like you and me) would know how to break this down properly. ;)

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