My phone only rings occasionally, randomly

Troubleshooting No Ring issues

Most basic first: Have you checked the mute switch on the left side of the phone above the volume buttons, and adjusted the ring volume with the volume buttons while viewing the Home screen? (You must be on the Home screen to adjust the ringer volume). 

If it rings but the ring isn’t loud enough: 

• First check the speakers. Go to Settings/Sounds & Haptics/Ringtone/Classic and tap Old Phone as a test. If it is loud enough then change it to whatever you want.
• Go to Settings/Face ID & Passcode, enter your passcode, and look at the switch for Attention Aware Features. When this is on sounds will be lowered when the phone sees that you are looking at the screen.

If there is no ring at all:

Are there missed calls in Phone/Recents on the phone? If they are not the problem is in the network, because the calls aren’t getting to your phone. Contact your carrier: 

• check with your carrier that they don’t have a local outage, and that you didn’t have any settings that would have immediately invoked voicemail, such as call forwarding.
• Note that they will still go to voicemail, because voicemail is prompted and recorded in the carrier’s network, not on your phone.
• check up on them at Down Detector - Crowdsourced outage checker

If they are in Recents here’s what to check in addition:

• Go to Settings/Phone. There’s a switch for Silence Unknown Callers. If it is on any calls from numbers not in your contacts will go directly to voicemail.
  • If you keep it on, in Settings/Phone make sure Dial Assist is enabled; it is needed to accurately match an incoming call to a contact.
  • Remember that banks, doctors and other professionals may not call you from the same number that you have in your contacts for them.
  • As some users have discovered, turning it on, then off sometimes helps.
• Also in Settings/Phone: Make sure Call Forwarding is off.
• Make sure Do Not Disturb is off:
  • iOS 14 & older: Go to Settings/Do not Disturb. Turn it off if it is on. Also turn off Scheduled. With both off none of the other switches there matter.
  • iOS 15: Go to Settings/Focus, and verify that all focus settings are disabled.
  • iOS 16 and later: Open the Control Center and turn off the button next to the word Focus.
• Go to Settings/Sounds & Haptics. Make sure there is a sound assigned to Ringtone.
• Go to Settings/Accessibility/Touch/Call Audio Routing and make sure Auto-Answer Calls is off.
• Go to Settings/Screen Time/Communications Limits. Tap each of the 2 entries and make sure both are “Everyone"
• Restart your phone-->Restart your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support
• If all else fails, talk your carrier into replacing your SIM card (thanks to ASC user DShelbyD)

Hi. Iphone Basic info iPhone 15 IOS 17.4.1

I don't know if this helps as I was having the same problem ie missing tones for calls etc etc as set up in Sound & Haptics. Was using custom ringtones. Changed to apple ring tones. Same problems. My problems sound the same as yours ie randomly working / not working. Therefore missed my sms and calls ! Had an iPhone XR same problem. Moved to iphone 15. Initially, like you, it worked then the random tone problems started.

I kept a diary for a number of days. Each day, I start by testing sound on sms (typed in to field and subject) AND on a youtube video I know has sound. If it worked then generally tones worked. If not, then I restart my iphone. Once I had a record over a number of days,I booked a Genius appt and saw a technical person. They tested hardware / software / audio - all was OK. I'd already done all the basic stuff, so the techo said I may have corrupt data that transferred across from my old iphone xr. I then had to do a erase contents and data ie started again from scratch.

Sadly, the problem still exists. It's just not a bad as before. Mystery continues for me. I hope you have better luck.

Cheers

Hello

Having had to erase all my contents and data and start from scratch without resolving the problem, I just gave up. I have however seen in another thread someone mentioned bluetooth.

Seems that this may work. 1) I sometimes don't have sound coming from a youtube video (that does have sound), it seems that Bluetooth hangs onto a prior connection i.e when sitting in my car that has not been turned on, I swipe to the control centre and it shows that the car's bluetooth has the sound. 2) Same when using iphone for call, Bluetooth hangs onto the fact that I had used my earbuds. Even if the earbuds are no longer in use. 3) have also tested the keyboard clicking issue and this partially explains the problem.

Conclusion-the problem is a software problem from Apple on Bluetooth