TL:DR: I have an older Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. I hate the stock Samsung Voicemail app. What's a better one? I don't want to sign up for a service, and I would rather avoid sending all my voicemail data to a server somewhere. Privacy is a concern, but second to a good app, and transcription.
Longer story: For the longest time, we used carriers who seemed to control voicemail on their end, no app needed. I would receive an SMS transcription, and have the option to call and listen to voicemail or click a link etc.
We changed to Verizon a while back and suddenly my phone decided to start using the baked in Samsung Voicemail app to manage voicemail - which is terrible. 6 voicemails and it's already complaining that my inbox is full and I constantly have to delete voicemail - making this worse is I get 3-4 spam calls a day that just leave silent voicemails so it fills up every 2 days or so. Even though I decline unknown callers etc, they still leave voicemail and I can't block them. Also no transcription or anything...anyway, I'm stuck with this phone for the time being and want to know what the best options out there are. Googling this is obviously useless. Thanks for anyone's input!
9 Comments
Turret3857@infosec.pub · 3 pts · 39d
as far as I am personally aware, you aren't going to find an app with transcription and privacy. There are no foss ones available. There may be one with transcription, but you have no guarantee of privacy. Google Dialer may have transcription, if downloading that on a non-pixel phone is still supported?
KingDingbat@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 39d
Yeah, I know Privacy and transcription really can't be expected to be friends, sadly.
Turret3857@infosec.pub · 2 pts · 39d
i mean they can be, there are open source transcription softwares, but as far as implementing it into a voicemail app I havent seen that yet.
sychthys@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 39d
I use Youmail. It's not cheap, but it does a good job with spam blocking and transcription.
KingDingbat@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 39d
I used YouMail years ago. I'm not keen on paying for a full service just to fix my voicemail problems, but I will look at it again. Thank you for the tip.
kn33@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 39d
If you're not opposed to it, I've been pretty happy with using Google Voice for voicemail
https://support.google.com/voice/answer/165656
KingDingbat@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 39d
I do use Google Voice separately for my second number... sadly can't really replace my phone's app with it.
kn33@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 39d
You could redirect your voicemail to it and use it as your voicemail app, though
KingDingbat@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 39d
I ended up going with YouMail again - used them years ago and after some research there's no huge glaring privacy issues.