When you call a business with a phone menu, Direct My Call shows you on screen what the automated voice says and what options you have to choose from. Some calls may also show menu options before they’re spoken. Learn how to use Direct My Call.
When you call a business and get put on hold, save time and let Call Assist wait on hold for you. Call Assist will notify you when a support representative is ready to speak with you. Learn how to turn on Hold for Me during a call.
To get you the most recent phone menu options, the number you call may be sent to Google when “See menu options faster” is on. No identifiers connected to you or your device get sent with the number. To protect your privacy, audio and call details are not sent to Google unless you voluntarily choose to share your audio and transcript after the call is over to help improve Hold for Me or Direct My Call.
When you use Hold for Me, the Phone app records the audio from the business and shows you a transcript of what’s said. When a support representative joins the call, they’ll hear a brief disclosure that the call is being recorded and connected to you. Your phone vibrates, plays a sound, and notifies you on your screen that you’ve been taken off hold. When you return to the call, the recording stops.
When you use Direct My Call, the Phone app shows a real-time transcript of any automated messages and menu options. And when you turn on “Faster menu options” with Direct My Call, some businesses show you menu options before they are spoken.
The “Faster menu options” setting only works if Google has call data from the business.
After a call, you can choose to share your Hold for Me and Direct My Call data to help Google improve both features. To share your data without any identifiers linked to you, submit your data as a “Google user.” Humans may review the data to help improve machine learning in Hold for Me and Direct My Call.
If you use Hold for Me or Direct My Call and choose to share your call data with Google, you allow Google to access:
- A recording and transcript of the call from the time you turn on Hold for Me until you return to the call
- System logs, like diagnostic data
- The business’s phone number
- Greeting and disclosures played on the call
- Hold For Me:
- Australia in English
- Canada in English
- Japan in English and Japanese
- United Kingdom in English
- United States in English
- Direct My Call:
- United Kingdom in English
- United States in English
Audio processing is done on your device and no audio recordings or transcripts are sent to Google, unless you choose to share your call data to help improve the feature.
You can listen to the audio recording and review the transcript before you decide whether to share your call data with Google.
Call data is stored on Google servers for only 180 days. You can delete any recordings you share with Google at any time. Go to your MyActivity and under ‘”Hold for Me” shared audio’ or ‘“Direct My Call” shared audio,’ click Delete.
If you choose not to share your data, the audio recording and transcript will be deleted from your device 48 hours after the call happened.
Google collects diagnostic data about your interaction with the business phone number. This includes data like whether or not your call was successful and the accuracy of our predictions. None of this information is linked to you or your identifiers.
Turn Hold for Me on or off
Important: Once the setting is on, you also have to turn on Hold for Me with each call to let the Call Assist wait on hold for you. Learn how to turn on Hold for Me during a call.
- Open the Phone app
.
- Tap More
Settings.
- Tap Hold for Me.
- Turn Hold for Me on or off.
Turn Direct My Call on or off
- Open the Phone app
- At the top right, tap More
- Tap Direct My Call.
- Turn Direct My Call on or off.
You can screen calls automatically on all Pixel phones in the US.
You can screen calls manually on Pixel phones in these countries:
- Australia
- Canada
- France
- Germany
- Ireland
- Italy
- Japan
- Spain
- US
Tip: Manual Call Screen is also available in the US and Canada on selected Android devices.
Tip: Manual Call Screen only works with a SIM card from the countries where Call Screen is available.
Important:
- Call Screen doesn’t work with third-party call recording and screen recording apps. We recommend you turn off these apps before you use Call Screen.
- Make sure you have the latest version of the Phone app. If you find Update, tap it.
To set up automatic call screening:
- Open the Phone app
- Tap More
Settings
- Tap Call Screen.
- Select your protection level:
- For Pixel 6 and below:
- Unknown call settings: Tap to select the types of callers you’d like to screen.
- For Pixel 7 and above:
- Protection level: Toggle Automatically screen calls on or off.
- Spam
- Possibly faked numbers
- First-time callers
- Protection level: Toggle Automatically screen calls on or off.
- For Pixel 6 and below:
Important:
- Call Screen is available only in the US for Pixel Watches and requires a Pixel 6 or newer Pixel phone
- You’ll need:
- Phone by Google app (version 116 or later)
- Phone by Google app on Watch (version 50 or later)
You can update the Watch and Phone apps from Google Play.
To use automatic Call Screen on Watch:
- Your Pixel watch must be connected to your Pixel phone over Bluetooth.
- Automatic Call Screen must be toggled on from the Phone’s Phone by Google app settings menu.
Important: Your phone may stop playing media, like videos or music, while it screens the call.
- Turn on Automatic screening.
- When someone calls and is screened, you get a silent “Screening unknown number” or “Screening suspicious call” notification.
- To view a transcript of the conversation in real-time between the caller and Call Assist live, tap the Screening unknown number or Screening suspicious call.
- Your Call Assist answers the call and asks who's calling and why. If the Call Assist determines the call is:
- A spam call, your phone hangs up.
- Not a spam call, your phone rings and shows you how the caller responded.
Tip: If you use headphones or if your phone is connected to Bluetooth, depending on device model, your phone might not automatically screen calls. Call Screen won’t screen calls automatically during roaming.
- When you get a call, tap Screen call.
- Your Call Assist screens the call and asks who's calling and why.
- You'll get a real-time transcript of how the caller responds.
- Once the caller responds, you can choose a suggested response, pick up the call, or hang up. Here are some responses and what the caller may hear:
- Is it urgent?: “Do you need to get a hold of them urgently?”
- Report as spam: “Please remove this number from your mailing and contact list. Thanks, and goodbye.”
- I'll call you back: “They can’t talk right now, but they'll give you a call later. Thanks, and goodbye.”
- I can't understand: "It's difficult to understand you at the moment. Could you repeat what you just said?”
If you can't manually screen calls, you may need to follow extra steps to turn on Call Screen.
- Open the Phone app
- Tap More
- Follow the on-screen instructions.
- If there are no on-screen instructions or if there are no “Call Screen” settings at all, your device doesn't work with Call Screen.
All screened calls will save a transcript of the screening on your phone. You can have your Pixel phone also save recordings.
- Turn on Save Call Screen audio.
- Open the Phone app
- Tap Recents.
- Tap the screened call.
- Tap Transcript or Transcript and audio. If you don't see those options, tap History
- Optional: To delete the transcript and recording, touch and hold the screened call. Then, tap Delete
.
- Call Screen uses contacts stored on your phone to determine whether to screen a call. If you don’t want a number to be screened, save the number as a contact.
- Not all spam calls and robocalls can be detected.
- The screened call information won’t be saved to your Google Account, your Call Assist Activity page, or to Web and App Activity.
- If you use call forwarding, don’t use automatic call screening. Screened calls won’t be forwarded.
- Call Screen won't always fully understand and transcribe what a caller said.
- Learn more about how Call Screen works.
Learn about Call Notes
Learn how Call Notes workWhen you activate this feature on the call, the participants are notified and the call is transcribed using advanced speech recognition technology and then summarized using the Gemini summarization model.
After the call ends, you'll find a brief summary of the key points discussed in the call log next to the call entry. The summary includes things like:
- Topics covered: Main ideas and talking points from the call.
- Dates, times and places: References to specific dates or times mentioned in the conversation. Some of these can be turned into action items for example, calendar appointments.
Tip: You can also access a full transcript of the call. This transcript provides a detailed record of everything that was said by both parties.
- Improved recall: Easily refresh your memory on what was discussed during a call, even weeks or months later.
- Enhanced productivity: Quickly identify key takeaways and action items, which allows you to stay on top of your tasks.
- Accessibility: Review call details on the go, even if you weren't able to take notes during the call.
- Improved organization: Review your call summaries and transcripts to find specific information quickly.
All your call summaries and transcripts are conveniently saved within the Android Phone app. You can easily access them through a dedicated section within the app which allows you to:
- Review summaries: Read through call summaries to get a quick overview of past conversations.
- Search transcripts (coming later): Find specific information within call transcripts by keyword or phrase.
- Manage storage: Choose to delete summaries and transcripts.
Tip: Call summary and transcript may not be available in all languages or regions.