Google is making a big change to how Fi users on iPhone access their voicemails: instead of getting voicemails from a dedicated tab in the Fi app, iPhone users will be able to get them right from the native iOS Phone app instead. The change started rolling out on Tuesday and will be fully rolled out by July 2nd, the Fi team says in a support forum post.
In August, Google plans to phase out voicemail in the iOS Google Fi app. “If you have voicemails you want to keep, you must download them using Google Takeout before August 13th,” the team says in its post. “After this date, they will no longer be available in the Google Fi app.”
If you use Google Fi and have an iPhone, you may have seen some voicemails show up in the iOS Phone app before this announcement. But that has only happened under a specific set of circumstances. If a user had iOS’s Live Voicemail feature turned on, your phone was turned on, and you were within Google Fi’s service area when getting a voicemail, that voicemail would be delivered to the iPhone’s Phone app, Google’s Patrick Seybold tells The Verge. After this update has rolled out to you, all voicemails will show up in the iPhone’s Phone app.
Google teased in April that this change was in the works. At that time, Google also announced a more affordable Google Fi Unlimited Essentials plan that costs $35 per month.
