Apple’s Messages app scored a bunch of new features in iOS 26, including a new ‘Screen Unknown Senders’ option meant to eliminate spam texts. My initial experience with the feature wasn’t great, but tweaking one key setting has changed that.
‘Screen Unknown Senders’ filters your Messages for spam
As part of the variety of new iPhone features in iOS 26, Apple sought to eliminate spam calls and texts.
The Phone app gained new call screening tools, and in Messages, Apple has a new ‘Screen Unknown Senders’ feature.
‘Screen Unknown Senders’ will identify messages that may be spam, and hide them away in a separate screen behind the filter icon in Messages’ top-right corner.
A key aspect of the feature is that these messages won’t trigger push notifications. They’ll be available in the dedicated ‘Unknown Senders’ section of Messages when they arrive, but you won’t be alerted every time potential spam comes in.
You can optionally disable ‘Screen Unknown Senders’ altogether, and Messages will work exactly as it did before. But Apple also provides some valuable filter options to make the feature work best for you.
Changing a key setting made Messages filters work better for me
For my first few months running iOS 26, I used ‘Screen Unknown Senders’ in its most restrictive setup.
Only messages identified as time sensitive were able to notify me. Generally this meant verification codes, or urgent alerts about a pending delivery.
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