Every day, places ranging from airlines, insurance carriers and health providers hold us hostage with elevator music and repeated reassurances that “your call is very important to us” as we desperately wait to reach a real human being.
What makes this hold time frustrating is that we never know if it will be five minutes or 45 minutes until it ends — which can tether us to our phones and make multitasking impossible.
But soon, no more. If you’re an Apple iOS user, there’s good news: In its keynote presentation at Monday’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple announced an upcoming iOS feature to eliminate the need to personally wait on hold to talk to a human representative.
Dubbed “Hold Assist,” this feature will take over, stay on the line and “wait” for you instead of you having to do it yourself. When you get stuck on a call with a wait time, “Hold Assist” will automatically turn off the music so you can run other errands.
The feature will also automatically send you a notification when it detects that a human representative has joined the call, so that you don’t miss the moment you’ve been waiting for.
Although “Hold Assist” is a new feature for Apple’s upcoming iOS 26 system, it’s not new for Android users. If you use the Pixel 3 or newer models, the “Hold for Me” feature will also wait on hold for you and notify you when a support representative is ready to speak.
Along with “Hold Assist,” Apple also announced that it will make it harder for unwanted, unsolicited robocallers to spam you with a “Call Screening” feature.
Under this iOS 26 feature, if an unknown caller contacts you, they must first share their name and their stated reason for calling. Only after doing this will your phone ring. Once it starts ringing, you’ll see the caller’s name and their reason for calling on your phone screen, so you can quickly decide if it’s worth picking up. Since so many of us receive dozens of scam phone calls every single day, any new feature that can stem the flood of unwanted calls is significant.
Apple’s “Call Screening” is similar to Google’s “Call Screen” feature, which has Google Assistant automatically tell a caller that you’re using a screening service, requiring them to state a reason for calling before they can reach you. Once they share a reason, Google Assistant will provide a real-time transcript, so you can decide if you should answer the call.
Beyond these features for phone calls, Apple also announced upgrades to its design and its branding.
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