How to Enable and Use Wi-Fi Calling on an iPhone

Wi-Fi calling allows your iPhone to place and receive phone calls and text messages over a Wi-Fi network. If you have a weak cellular signal but a solid Wi-Fi signal, your iPhone will automatically switch over and route calls and texts via Wi-Fi.

Apple added support for Wi-Fi calling to the iPhone with iOS 8, and it’s gradually becoming supported on more and more carriers. You can only use this if your cellular carrier supports it.

What You Need to Know

This is disabled by default, so you’ll have to enable it before it will do anything. Once you’ve enabled it, it will “just work” and your phone will automatically switch to Wi-Fi when necessary. You’ll see this indicated in the status bar — for example, it will say “T-Mobile Wi-Fi” rather than “T-Mobile LTE” if you’re using T-Mobile and your phone is currently connected to Wi-Fi rather than the LTE cellular network. Dial a number or send a text message in the normal way while “Wi-Fi” appears in your status bar and it will connect over the Wi-Fi connection instead of the cellular one.

It’ll automatically switch between cellular and Wi-Fi networks as you move out of an area covered by Wi-Fi, so you don’t have to do anything different or even think about it.

This only works if your carrier has enabled the necessary support on their end. The carrier has to be able to automatically route calls and texts to you over the Internet.

What You’ll Need

You’ll just need two things to use this feature:

A carrier that supports Wi-Fi calling: In the US, T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T support this. Bell and Rogers support it in Canada, EE and Vodaphone support it in the UK, and 3 and SmarTone support it on Hong Kong. More carriers should support it in the future.
An iPhone 5c or newer: Older iPhones don’t support this. You’ll need an iPhone 5c, 5s, 6, 6s, or a newer model to use this feature.

How to Enable Wi-Fi Calling

To enable Wi-Fi calling, open the Settings app on your iPhone, scroll down, and tap Phone. Tap “Wi-Fi Calling” under Calls and activate the “Wi-Fi Calling on This iPhone” slider.

You should also tap “Update Emergency Address” and ensure your carrier has a correct address. If you ever dial 911 over a Wi-Fi network, the emergency responders will see your call associated with the emergency address you enter here.

If you ever encounter a problem with Wi-Fi calling, you can visit this screen again and disable it with a quick tap.