VeroSMS 4+

The developer emailed me back and said that there’s an Apple bug that prevents synced devices like the Apple Watch from blocking the SMS. So, it’s automatically moved to a junk folder on your phone and there is no notification for the spam message on your phone, but your watch will still get the notification.

The app should have a disclaimer about this in the description because I would not have paid for this app’s premium features if I would have known about this issue that makes the app not function as advertised beforehand.

Edit: Been using the app a few days and it IS nice that the spam message doesn’t show up on phone (but still notifies on the watch), so raising from 2 stars to 3.

I have tried a lot of other apps. Only a couple actually worked but required a subscription and still didn’t block certain spam text. Having the ability to put in custom words in is amazing. AI can be good at blocking but sometimes being able to add your own words is just better. May take a bit to get everything typed in, but it’s worth it in the end. I was getting 10-20 spam text a day. It’s already stopped them since I installed it a couple hours ago, they were put in the junk folder. Only thing I wish it had was the ability to block the text notifications on my Apple Watch. Hoping maybe that will be something added later on. For now because I get so many text I just disabled notifications for text on my watch.

My mother was getting really annoyed by all of the spam messages she was receiving (especially the frequent notifications). She was starting to turn her phone ringer off at night, which was not good if we needed to contact her. I researched filtering options with her iPhone and with Verizon but didn’t find anything helpful. This app had a good rating so I installed it on her phone. It’s been on for about a week and so far is working very well. It’s easy to add whitelist and blacklist words to make sure that she’s getting all of the authentic messages and none of the spam. The only change I would make would be to add a “select all” option in the spam folder to make it easier to delete everything. Other than it is a great app and has made Mom’s life a lot less irritating.