5 ways to know if someone has blocked your number on an iPhone

There are a few different steps you can take to get a sense of whether someone has blocked your iPhone number. Karl Tapales/Getty Images

• To know if someone blocked you on iPhone, send them an iMessage or SMS and see if it gets delivered.
• You can also try calling them to see if it rings once before going to voicemail – a huge red flag.
• It's hard to know for sure if you've been blocked, as these signs could have other explanations. 

Knowing your phone number is blocked is, if nothing else, a good way to know where you stand with someone.

While it's likely not OK to go ahead and contact someone who blocked you without their consent, there are a few ways you could try to check if you're blocked.

How to know if someone blocked you on iPhone

Finding out if you've been blocked on an iPhone isn't a clean cut-and-dried process. There's no definitive way to know if you've been blocked aside from the blocker telling you outright.

But to get a sense of whether you're blocked, you could try several different methods and cross-reference your results.

Send them an iMessage

If the person you suspect has blocked you has an Apple device, you can try sending them a courteous iMessage, which will be sent over the internet. You can tell the difference between a regular SMS and an iMessage by looking at the message bubble – a green bubble means it's an SMS, while a blue bubble means it's an iMessage.

Whenever you send someone an iMessage, you'll see the delivery status right below it. If you haven't been blocked, the status will read "Delivered." And if the person has enabled read receipts, it will later turn to "Read" once they open the message.

Check to see if the SMS message was delivered or not. Steven John

A red flag that you've been blocked is when you don't see the delivery status or the read receipt at all. The message you just sent will still be in a blue bubble, but it will have no delivery status below it – not even a "Not Delivered."

Quick tip: A quick way to tell if it's a network problem behind your iMessage not going through, as opposed to being blocked, is that the Messages app may try to resend it as an SMS message instead. 

Send them an SMS message

When you send them an SMS and you get the "Delivered" notification underneath it, you weren't blocked. If you get a notification like "Message Not Delivered" or you get no notification at all, that's a sign of a potential block.

Quick tip: If you get an auto-generated response telling you why the message didn't go through, you can relax. You wouldn't receive an auto-response if the person blocked you.

Give them a phone call

Next, you could try calling the person. If the call goes right to voicemail or rings once (or a half ring) then goes to voicemail, that's further evidence you may have been blocked.

Mask your number

After you've tried calling them a few times with no luck, then it's time to hide your number when calling them. 

Call again, but this time dialing *67 before you type in the phone number. If it rings through normally with this masked phone number (or if the person answers), then that almost definitely means your number was blocked.

Check if they've also blocked you on other messaging apps

If the person is set on blocking you, they will most likely block you in other places as well. If you contact them on WhatsApp, for example, you'll also notice these signs that you've been blocked on WhatsApp. 

If by any luck they haven't blocked you there as well, they will see your message when they're back online, but they may not respond. In that case, make the message you send them count, but be polite if you want to get to the bottom of why they blocked your texts and calls.

Potential false positive signs that you've being blocked

If you try to call someone and it goes right to voicemail, you might have been blocked. But on the other hand, the person's phone might be turned off or have a drained battery, or they might simply be in Airplane Mode or Do Not Disturb mode.

iPhones have many ways to automatically block calls without blocking a number — the person you're trying to call may just have one of these settings turned on. Stefan Ionescu

Otherwise, they might have immediately sent you to voicemail because they were on another call, in class, or just didn't want to talk at the moment.

Likewise, a text message that isn't delivered might be a result of poor cell service or occasional glitches in iMessage, not a fracture in your relationship. Wait a few hours, or even a day, and try to call or text again and see how it goes.