Truecaller iOS Update Rolls Out Real-Time Caller ID Support

Popular caller ID app Truecaller is rolling out an update that brings real-time caller ID support to its iOS subscribers.

Apple introduced Live Caller ID Lookup in iOS 18, allowing third-party caller ID apps to securely retrieve information about a caller from their servers, hence today's Truecaller update.

iPhone users can enable the Live Caller ID Lookup feature by going to Settings ➝ Apps ➝ Phone, and selecting Call Blocking & Identification. Here, users should enable all Truecaller switches and open the Truecaller app again.

Truecaller told TechCrunch it built a new server architecture to enable the new feature, and created a separate, encrypted database for iOS, alongside its existing larger database for Android users:

Apple's Phone app makes encrypted requests to this database and gets encrypted responses that are only decrypted on the client (iPhone) to show the caller ID in real time. This process is called "homomorphic encryption," as the computations use encrypted data instead of decrypting them first, while decryption happens on the client to display caller information if it matches with the data stored on the server.

Truecaller has around 750,000 iPhone-using subscribers out of around 2.6 million subscribers in total, where the majority are Android users. However, 40% of Truecaller’s revenue is from iOS subscriptions, thanks to a 5x conversation rate to its premium tier on iOS compared to Android, and 80% higher revenue from iPhone subscribers.

In addition to the new feature support, Truecaller has updated its interface, with the caller's name appearing in bold over their number. The latest version also includes automatic blocking of spam calls, while other improvements include the ability to search for previously identified calls, going as far back as 2,000 previous numbers in the Recents list in the Phone app.

Prior to iOS 18, Truecaller had to rely on a locally saved dictionary of limited phone numbers on iOS. The Android app has offered real-time caller information for some time, so the latest iOS update is bringing feature parity across platforms. Truecaller says it is now working on support for images to show up in the caller ID for its iOS users.

Truecaller's premium tier for iOS users starts at $9.99 a month per person, or $74.99/year. The company also has a family plan on iOS starting at $14.99/month or $99.99/year and the highest tier Gold subscription at $249 a year.