You can change how long your phone rings, but not through settings

You can control a lot of things on your smartphone, from the appearance of its home screen to personalized ringtones. What’s strangely missing from these settings is an option to adjust how long your phone actually rings. When someone calls and the phone goes through its ring sequence, if it’s too long with too many rings or too short, you’re out of luck because you’re stuck with the way things are going. At least it is not possible to change this manually from the device in the majority of cases. Indeed, your mobile operator determines the duration of the connection. The process is not controlled on your end.

With some carriers, there are ways to adjust the ring delay, but it varies. Sprint, for example, doesn’t offer this option at all. With AT&T and T-Mobile, you can use a hidden dialing sequence that works just like secret codes for various tricks on iPhone devices. These are generally called human-machine interface (MMI) codes. Verizon customers should call customer service directly and ask for help, which is the case with any Verizon owned and operated wireless carrier.

There are workarounds depending on the type of phone you have. Samsung’s latest Galaxy devices, S22 to S26 series with Android 16 and One UI 8.5 or higher, now allow you to adjust the ring duration via Direct Voicemail settings. Whichever method works for you, here are the easiest ways to set everything up and adjust the ring delay.

Using the phone dialer will mainly work for AT&T and T-Mobile customers. This may or may not work for cheap carriers that use AT&T’s network or small phone carriers that use T-Mobile’s network. It’s uncertain. Using this method shouldn’t break anything if it doesn’t work. Additionally, this method should work on Android and iPhone devices regardless of carrier support. To set the ring delay, you will first need your voicemail number.

1. Open your phone dialer.
2. Dial *#61#
3. Press the call button.
4. A prompt will appear, displaying your service details. Look under “Voice call forwarding” for an 11-digit phone number.
5. Write down this number. If you try to do this on an unsupported carrier, like Verizon, the prompt will simply show a failure message after a while.

Once you have your voicemail number, it’s time to set the ring delay using the dial code. This time, in the dialer, type **61* with the 11-digit number, immediately followed by *11* and the amount of time you want the ringtone to last in five-second increments (up to 30), then a #. It should look like this: **61*(voicemail number)*11*20#. The 20 should be replaced with 20 seconds (you can change it to your preference). When you have successfully entered this dial code, press the call button. Wait for the prompt to appear telling you that the call transfer was successful, then restart your phone to apply the changes.

If you have a Samsung Galaxy device running Android 16 with One UI 8.5 or later, you can change the call timeout using a workaround from the device itself. Samsung is one of the first phone makers to offer something like this. In addition to having the correct device model and software version, your mobile carrier should help you change this setting, so keep that in mind. This will not work on Sprint. To adjust your delay:

1. Open the phone app.
2. At the top right, tap the menu icon (three vertical dots).
3. Go to Settings.
4. Tap Direct Voicemail.
5. At the top of the menu you will see a toggle, probably disabled. Turn it on to enable direct voicemail.

If this is your first time, you may need to agree to the terms and conditions to finalize. Once done, scroll down to the Auto send to voicemail option and enable it. Below that, you’ll see a blue setting to send to voicemail “after x seconds.” The default is 20 seconds (approximately three to four rings). Choose your duration if you want to change it.

Note that 20 seconds will be the maximum option available if your carrier does not support longer delays. On my Galaxy S25 through Verizon, I can only choose up to 20 seconds, not 30. Once you change the timeout, you can test it by asking someone to call you and letting it ring.