How to Stop iPhone Calls Ringing a Mac

“Why are my iPhone calls ringing on on my Mac?” Perhaps you have asked yourself this question after noticing that since updating your Mac to a modern version of MacOS or Mac (including MacOS Mojave, High Sierra, Sierra, OS X El Capitan, Yosemite), that when your iPhone gets an incoming phone call, so does your Mac. In fact, all of your Macs running the latest Mac OS X and using the same Apple ID will get a phone call, creating a whole chorus of ringing, just from a single iPhone call. While many users will enjoy this feature, which lets you both make and receive phone calls from an iPhone through the Mac by using the computers microphone and speakers, it can also be a nuisance if you’d rather just use your iPhone as a phone. Fortunately, this setting is easily to adjust to suit your preferences.

Do note that by stopping the Mac from ringing with an iPhone phone call, you’ll also prevent the Mac from being able to make outbound calls using the iPhone. There’s not much of a way to get around that, aside from adjusting the notification preferences for FaceTime, which we’re not going to cover specifically here.

How to Disable iPhone Calling in Mac OS X

To disable calls to your iPhone from ringing on your Mac, you need to visit the FaceTime preferences. That may sound a little strange at first, but recall that FaceTime in Mac OS X also has VOIP voice calling ability, making it a reasonable location for the setting.

1. Open the “FaceTime” application on the Mac
2. Pull down the FaceTime menu and choose “Preferences”
3. Under the primary Settings tab in FaceTime, uncheck the box for “Calls from iPhone” or “iPhone Cellular Calls” depending on your MacOS version



4. Close Preferences and quit FaceTime to no longer get iPhone calls on the Mac

This will prevent the Mac from ringing when an iPhone gets a phone call, and any notifications from coming to the Mac that the iPhone has a phone call. It will not impact other FaceTime features and the ability to make FaceTime audio or video calls will persist.

For many Mac users this feature is very useful and quite nice to have, but for some it may be best used on a limited basis. For example, maintaining the feature on your primary iPhone and primary Mac, but disabling it on other devices, so that an entire office or house of Macs does not start ringing with an inbound phone call. Of course that situation may only apply to users with a lot of different computers, but there are certainly many Mac users who would fit into that category.

Many users have noticed that after they’ve updated their Mac to the latest version of Mac OS X, and their iPad and other iDevices to the latest versions of iOS, suddenly they have an entire symphony of ringing when just their iPhone gets a call. If you’re annoyed by this on your other devices, you can also stop other iOS devices, including stopping iPad from ringing when iPhone gets a phone call too.

Like all other settings, you can always change this back to the default if you want to receive phone calls on the Mac again. It’s all a matter of personal preference.