Truecaller’s real-time caller ID feature can be a useful tool for dealing with spam, scams, and robocalls. The service can identify callers, even if they’re not in your contacts lists, and help you decide whether to pick up the phone when you see an unknown number, let it go to voicemail, or block it directly.
If you live in a region that receives a lot of spam calls, Truecaller might be something to consider to reduce the number of calls that reach your iPhone or Android device. Blocking spam numbers will also cut down the amount of spam texts you receive.
Until this week, Android users got the best possible Truecaller experience, as the iPhone app did not support real-time caller ID. However, the company is now ready to take advantage of a new feature in iOS 18 that allows it to offer real-time caller ID to iPhone owners.
According to TechCrunch, Truecaller has over 2.6 million paying subscribers, with 750,000 of them being iPhone users. However, the iPhone app is responsible for 40% of revenue. That’s why Truecaller jumped at the chance to upgrade the iOS experience by adding real-time caller ID support to the app.
The feature is possible as Apple now supports a Live Caller ID Lookup feature in iOS 18. This allows third parties like Truecaller to check caller information in real time on its servers. It all happens more securely than on Android, as Apple requires better privacy.
Before iOS 18, Truecaller offered caller ID support on the iPhone by preloading a database on the device. The app then compared numbers from incoming calls against that continuously updated database. Truecaller would display matches, but it wouldn’t work in real-time.
Live Caller ID was available to iPhone users after iOS 16 came out, but it wasn’t real-time. The feature also required users to involve Siri in the process.
Now, Truecaller will perform the comparison in real time using a new server architecture and an encrypted database for iPhone. The iPhone app will make encrypted requests to the database and get encrypted responses back. The results are decrypted on the iPhone where the user would see the caller ID number in real time.
The iPhone app offers a more secure experience than the Android app, which doesn’t encrypt the Truecaller database of phone numbers.
Interestingly, the encrypted and non-encrypted databases are synced periodically. Currently, the process is time-consuming and “very expensive,” but it apparently works.
Truecaller premium costs $9.99/month or $74.99/year. The family plan costs $14.99/month or $99.99/year. A Gold top-tier subscription costs $249/year.
Truecaller is available as a free download in the App Store at this link.
