Popular caller ID app Truecaller has lengthy left iPhone customers at an obstacle by not providing the caller data in real-time — a function its Android customers have loved for a while. Today, that modifications as the corporate is rolling out an replace that brings real-time caller ID help to its iOS subscribers.
The firm was in a position to implement the function as a result of Apple launched Live Caller ID Lookup in iOS 18, permitting third-party caller ID apps to securely make a name to their server to get details about the caller. Notably, that is additionally the primary main launch from the Swedish firm after the co-founders Alan Mamedi and Nami Zarringhalam stepped down from the day-to-day operations in November 2024.
Today, Truecaller has greater than 2.6 million paying subscribers, of which solely round 750,000 of them are on iOS. However, 40% of Truecaller’s income is from iOS subscriptions. The firm additionally will get a 5X dialog fee to its premium tier on iOS in comparison with Android in addition to 80% larger income from an iPhone subscriber.
Considering the significance of the iPhone to Truecaller’s backside line, the corporate continues to develop its iOS app.
In 2022, Truecaller relaunched the iOS app to concentrate on higher spam detection, because of Apple permitting the app to retailer a bigger set of numbers domestically.
“It did improve the overall call identification. But that wasn’t enough because in countries like India, there is a huge calling activity, and not all this would be available in the offline database,” Truecaller Product Director Nakul Kabra informed TechCrunch in an interview.
India presents different challenges for the corporate, as properly, together with the arrival of a service, Calling Name Presentation (generally referred to as CNAP, designed to curb spam. The service, presently being rolled out by native telcos, may ultimately emerge as a competitor to Truecaller.
Truecaller additionally up to date its iOS app in 2023 with a reside caller ID expertise, however that concerned a step requiring interplay with Siri and in addition wasn’t real-time.
Until iOS 18’s launch, Truecaller needed to depend on a domestically saved dictionary of restricted telephone numbers on iOS.
To allow the brand new function, Truecaller constructed a brand new server structure and created a separate, encrypted database for iOS, alongside its current bigger database for Android customers. Apple’s Phone app makes encrypted requests to this database and will get encrypted responses which can be solely decrypted on the shopper (iPhone) to point out the caller ID in actual time. This course of known as “homomorphic encryption,” because the computations use encrypted knowledge as an alternative of decrypting them first, whereas decryption occurs on the shopper to show caller data if it matches with the information saved on the server.
Kabra informed TechCrunch that Truecaller had constructed a solution to sync two databases to maintain the information synced between them.
“At the moment, there might be a bit of a delay because these requests get queued up, and the encryption that we do is very time-consuming — and very expensive… But it should not be more than a few hours,” he mentioned.
TechCrunch examined reside caller ID underneath Truecaller’s beta program final week and seen that the function does present caller data in real-time most often, although it typically misses.
Truecaller’s premium tier on iOS begins at $9.99 a month, per particular person, or $74.99/yr. The firm additionally affords its household plan on iOS beginning at $14.99/month or $99.99/yr and the top-end Gold subscription at $249 a yr.
Users can allow the Live Caller ID Lookup function by iPhone Settings > Apps > Phone > Call Blocking & Identification.
On iOS 18, Truecaller additionally up to date its interface with the caller’s identify showing in daring over their quantity. Now, Truecaller is engaged on help for photographs to point out up within the caller ID for its iOS customers.
