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Automatic Call Screening

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Joy edited this page Mar 22, 2025 · 10 revisions

This guide teaches you how to add the automatic call screening to your Pixel device from unsupported countries link

For this guide, I'm using a Pixel 6 Pro with Android 14

⚠️ Warning ⚠️

This guide comes with a few compromises that you'll need to note

  1. Your wallet data will be cleared
  2. You'll need to re-setup Wear OS
  3. Notifications may be delayed (haven't encountered this)
  4. You'll need to add your country code to all your calls and messages (hyperlink to note)

As usual with all guides, I'm not responsible if something goes wrong, but feel free to go to the discussions and post your problem there.

Prerequisites:

You can also find the APKs used in the GitHub repo

Ready? Let's go!

Steps

  1. Open GMS Flags. If you see the screenshot below, continue. Otherwise, go to this step img.png

Installing an older version of Google Play Services

⚠️ Warning ⚠️: This part will clear your Wallet data and Wear OS data

🔗 Note: This part of the guide rips from this website with a few key differences

Before we continue, let's explain why we are downgrading GMS (Google Play Services/Google Mobile Services). As you'll note in the screenshot, Google has introduced a new schema to stop apps like GMS Flags and GAppsMod from working. Therefore, we must downgrade our GMS version to get the old schema back to get automatic call screening working. Here's a screenshot to scare you with the new schema. (source) img_1.png

  1. Download Google Play Services v24.38.63 for Android 12-15 and v24.38.34 for Android 11 and below
  2. To know which package you need to download, go to your app info and find Google Play Services (show system) and scroll to the bottom, to find its version number. Keep note of the last few digits, as you'll see in the screenshots below img.png img.png

To tweak with GMS signature, or not to?

ℹ️ Before we commence, you'll need to make a decision

When you downgrade GMS, the Play Store automatically updates GMS to the latest version. And as you guessed, that brings the ugly schema back. There is one way (currently testing) to make Play Store fail to update GMS. And that is to sign the APK with your own key. If you want to proceed with this step, continue onto the next step. Otherwise, go to Option B

Option A: Overwriting GMS's APK signature

ℹ️ For this next step, you can use anything that you are comfortable with. For me I'm using a Windows machine

  1. With the GMS APK, rename the .apk to .zip
  2. Delete the META-INF folder inside the zip. This contains the signature that we want to overwrite. (WinRAR ftw!!!!)
  3. (Possibly optional) You probably need to extract the zip before deleting the folder. And then zip up that folder again
  4. With the modified GMS zip, rename the .zip to .apk
  5. Open App Manager, and agree to sign your rights away 🙂
  6. Inside App Manager, go to settings (3 dots) > APK signing > Signing key. If you have not set/generated a signing key go ahead and fill in some nonsense info. Make sure the key expiry date is far into the future.
  7. For Signature schemes, select all and save img.png
  8. Open Pixel Xpert > Package manager and enable "Bypass package signature check" img.png
  9. Select your APK file and share it to App Manager. You want to "Install"
  10. "Downgrade", and "Only Install". This part will take a few minutes for it to complete, so be patient :slightly_smiling_face: img.png img.png

Option B: Keeping GMS's APK signature

  1. Select your APK file and share it to App Manager. You want to "Install"
  2. "Downgrade", and then just wait. This part can take a long time to finish. ⏲️ img.png

Hey what's that?

img.png This is one of the normal symptoms you will get when downgrading GMS. In addition, your phone will likely freeze/act stupid for a few minutes. Just be patient

  1. Restart your device

Stop GMS's new schema

To stop GMS from using the new schema, here's what you can do!

  1. Open GMS Flags > Search > "Google Play Services" > "com.google.android.gms.phenotype" > "Database__enable_phixit_schema_version". Turn that OFF img.png

Great! We are nearly there now

Become a US SIM Card

  1. With Pixel IMS open, go to your primary SIM card > Expert Mode > "sim_country_iso_override_string" > Set it to "us" img.png
  2. For all the CarrierVanityName users out there, just set the country code to "us" img.png
  3. Go to Google Dialer > Assisted dialling > Observe your Default home country is set is automatically detected as "United States". If not, you selected the wrong sim, or put the wrong country code img.png
  4. Set your Default home country to your actual home country. If you can't find it, turn off Assisted dialling altogether :information_source: Your carrier will automatically add the local country code for you, so there should be no downsides

Turn on Call Screening

  1. Go to GMS Flags and "Enable Call Screen feature". Set it to your home country, or just select English as is. Confirm img.png ⚠️ This step will delete all your call recordings inside the Google Dialler app. If you want to save them, they are saved at "/data/user/0/com.google.android.dialer/files/callrecording" (source) Also you'll need to fix assisted dialling again
  2. Open Google Dialer
  3. Now force stop Google Dialer
  4. Open it again
  5. Settings > Spam and Call Screen img.png
  6. Call Screen > See how the Call Screen works

🛜 You'll be stuck on "Activating Call Screen (requires Wi-Fi)" for quite a while. Come back in 10 minutes

  1. Call yourself with a private line/a number your phone hasn't seen (you can delete all history for a contact/number)
  2. If you've enabled your settings correctly, it should work and you should see something similar to the video below
call_screening_in_action.mp4

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