How to Turn Off Call Forwarding on iPhone and Android (Plus What Parents Should Check)

If your calls have been going somewhere else and you finally want them to ring on your own phone again, this guide gets you there in about a minute. We will walk through the fastest toggle path on iPhone, the same path on Android across Samsung, Pixel, and other skins, the universal GSM codes that work when the toggle is missing or greyed out, and the troubleshooting steps for the most common headache — call forwarding that keeps switching itself back on after you turn it off. If you are a parent confirming that nothing is being silently rerouted from a child's phone, there is a calm walkthrough for that too, plus what to watch for afterwards. Seeing odd entries in the log? what "Canceled" means on an iPhone call decodes them.

Quick fix: the one-minute way to turn off call forwarding

If you just want the answer, here it is. Most people land on the right setting in under sixty seconds.

• iPhone. Open Settings, tap Phone, tap Call Forwarding, switch the toggle off.
• Android. Open the Phone app, tap the three-dot menu or Settings, choose Calling accounts (Pixel and stock Android) or Supplementary services (Samsung One UI), tap Call forwarding, and disable each forwarding type one at a time.
• Universal GSM code. From the keypad, dial ##21# to cancel unconditional call forwarding on every carrier that supports MMI codes. Dial ##002# to cancel every type of forwarding — unconditional, busy, no-answer, and unreachable — in one shot.
• Confirm it worked. Call the line from another phone. It should ring on the original device instead of routing somewhere else. The little phone-with-arrow icon in the status bar should also disappear.

If any of those did not work cleanly, the sections below cover the exact path on each platform and the reasons forwarding sometimes refuses to stay off.

Turn off call forwarding on iPhone (step-by-step)

On iPhone the native path is short, but the option can hide on dual-SIM lines and on certain carrier setups.

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Scroll to and tap Phone.
3. Tap Call Forwarding.
4. Flip the toggle to off. If a forwarding number is shown below it, you can leave it — disabling the toggle is enough to stop the rerouting.

When the Call Forwarding option is missing

If you do not see Call Forwarding under Phone, the issue is almost always the carrier or eSIM line not exposing supplementary services in iOS. This is common on Verizon CDMA-era lines, on certain prepaid MVNOs, and on some travel eSIMs. In that case, skip the toggle and use the GSM code method — open the Phone keypad and dial ##21# followed by the call button, or ##002# to wipe every forwarding rule at once.

Dual-SIM iPhones

On an iPhone with two active lines, the Call Forwarding screen shows a line selector at the top. Tap the line you want to change first, then disable the toggle. Repeat for the second line — turning forwarding off on one number does not affect the other.

To confirm the change, look at the top status bar. A small phone-with-arrow glyph appears whenever any active line is forwarding calls; it disappears once every line is set to off. Calling the number from another device is the final sanity check.

Turn off call forwarding on Android (step-by-step)

The Android path differs slightly between Samsung, Pixel, and other manufacturers, but the destination is the same screen.

1. Open the Phone or Dialer app.
2. Tap the three-dot menu in the corner, then Settings. On Samsung, you may need Settings then Supplementary services. On Pixel and stock Android, choose Calling accounts and pick the SIM.
3. Tap Call forwarding.
4. Disable each forwarding type individually: Always forward, When busy, When unanswered, and When unreachable.

Pixel and Samsung path differences

On Pixel and stock Android the menu lives at Phone > Settings > Calling accounts > [SIM] > Call forwarding. On Samsung's One UI, it lives at Phone > Settings > Supplementary services > Call forwarding > [Voice call or Video call]. Other skins — OnePlus OxygenOS, Xiaomi MIUI, Motorola — sit somewhere between the two, but the trail always starts inside the Phone app's three-dot menu.

When the toggle is greyed out or missing

Some carrier-locked Android devices and CDMA-era lines hide the menu entirely. If the toggle is greyed out, missing, or refuses to save, switch to the keypad: dial ##21# to cancel unconditional forwarding, or ##002# to clear every forwarding rule on the line. The dialer will show a brief confirmation message from the network when the change is accepted.

Universal carrier and GSM codes for stubborn cases

When the native toggle is not cooperating, MMI codes go directly to the carrier and bypass the device UI entirely.

Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile each expose the same standard GSM codes on modern SIM lines. If a code does not stick, open the carrier's own app — My Verizon, myAT&T, or T-Life — and check the Calls or Call Settings section, because some carrier-side rules override anything you do on the handset. Some Android skins and CDMA setups never expose a native toggle at all and rely exclusively on feature codes; this is a quirk of the network, not a defect on your phone.

Why call forwarding keeps turning back on (and how to stop it)

If you turn forwarding off, hang up, and find it back on an hour later, one of these is usually the cause.

• Wi-Fi Calling or VoLTE re-applying rules. Both features can silently re-route forwarding when the device hands off between Wi-Fi and cellular. Turn each off temporarily, disable forwarding again, then re-test before turning Wi-Fi Calling back on.
• Carrier-side voicemail forwarding. Many carriers configure conditional forwarding (busy, no-answer, unreachable) to send missed calls to voicemail by default. The device UI shows this as forwarding even though it is normal voicemail behavior. ##002# clears it; the carrier will usually reapply the voicemail rule the next time the line re-registers.
• Carrier-locked settings. Some prepaid and business lines have forwarding pinned at the network level. The device toggle appears to work but reverts on the next sync. Call the carrier from *611 to confirm and to ask for the rule to be removed.
• Third-party dialer apps. Replacement dialers, voicemail apps, and call-screening tools sometimes manage forwarding behind the scenes. Disable or uninstall them, reboot, and try again.
• Work-profile and MDM policies. Corporate-managed phones can have forwarding pushed by IT through a mobile device management profile. You will not be able to override this from the device — contact the IT admin.
• Read the current state. Dial *#21# from the keypad. It is a read-only query that asks the network what forwarding is active right now, without changing anything. If the response shows forwarding still enabled after you toggled it off, the issue is carrier-side, not the device.

Checking call forwarding on a child's or family member's phone

If you are a parent and want to confirm a child's phone is not silently forwarding to a number you do not recognise, the check is the same one above — done calmly, with the child, on their device.

There are a handful of reasons a teen might enable forwarding in the first place. They may want to mask incoming calls from a parent, route certain calls to a secondary number, hide contact with a specific person, or experiment with prank-style call routing they saw on social media. Most cases are curiosity rather than concealment, and the conversation usually goes better when you treat it that way.

On a child's iPhone:

1. Open Settings > Phone > Call Forwarding together.
2. Note whether the toggle is on, and whether a number is listed below it.
3. If on, flip it off. If you want to read the live network state first, dial *#21# from the Phone app — it queries the carrier without changing anything.

On a child's Android:

1. Open the Phone app > three-dot menu > Settings > Calling accounts or Supplementary services.
2. Tap Call forwarding and check each of the four types.
3. Disable any that are on, or use ##002# to clear everything at once.

The at-a-glance signal on both platforms is the small phone-with-arrow icon in the status bar. If it is visible, something is forwarding right now. If it is gone, nothing is. On a child's phone, a call forwarding and log monitoring view helps you catch forwarding that was set up to route calls somewhere you can't see, alongside the regular call record.

How NexSpy adds ongoing call and SMS visibility on a child's Android

Turning forwarding off is a one-time fix. The harder question for a parent is what happens next — whether unwanted numbers reappear in the call log a week later, whether the same person reaches out by text instead, or whether forwarding gets re-enabled silently. On Android, NexSpy is built to answer those follow-up questions without resorting to covert tactics, and it sits squarely inside lawful parental supervision.

Block the numbers that should not be reaching the phone

The most useful layer after a forwarding clean-up is the call blacklist and whitelist on Android. A blacklist quietly stops specific numbers from getting through; a whitelist flips the model so that only approved contacts — family, school, close friends — can ring the phone at all. For a younger child the whitelist is usually the right starting point. For a teenager the blacklist is less restrictive and easier to keep current as new spam or unwanted numbers appear.

Paired with that, automatic spam call blocking from the blacklist means flagged numbers do not ring through at all. The phone does not light up, the child is not pushed into a decision about whether to answer, and the entry still shows up in the parent log so the pattern is visible over time. This is the layer that catches a number you turned forwarding off to escape from in the first place.

See risky language in SMS without reading every message

NexSpy's real-time keyword alerts on sent or received SMS flag risky language — bullying, drug references, contact from a stranger, or any custom term you add — and surface the snippet that triggered the alert. The intent is not a full chat-log dump. It is a signal that something is worth a conversation, with enough context to know what kind of conversation it should be.

Read the call log with context

Finally, call log context for parent review gives you the dates, durations, and numbers behind the noise. If the same unknown number keeps appearing in the log even after a blacklist add, that is useful information. If a forwarding rule somehow reappears, the unusual call pattern often shows up here first.

Honest limits

A few things to be straight about. These calls and SMS controls are Android only — Apple does not expose the same hooks on iOS, so an iPhone child device cannot use them. Exact behavior depends on the Android version and the permissions granted at setup. And the framing matters: this is lawful parental supervision of a child's device that the child knows about, not covert wiretapping or surveillance of another adult.