By
Adam Simmons
· Last checked
August 2026
Start with the phone's settings, not the app's. In the great majority of cases the app is being silenced by the operating system rather than failing on its own, and the fix is three toggles.
Check, in this order: notification permissions for the app (including the permission to make sound and to show on the lock screen), battery optimisation or low-power mode, whether the app is exempt from being put to sleep in the background, and whether a focus mode or do-not-disturb schedule is quietly filtering it. On Android the battery-optimisation setting is the usual culprit; on iPhone it is more often notification settings or a focus mode.
If all of that is clean and it still misses calls, the problem is delivery rather than settings — the call is arriving over the internet and the notification is not getting through in time. That is a genuine limitation of app-based lines, not a misconfiguration, and it is the most consistently reported complaint about every product in this category. Reviewers describe missed calls because the app did not ring, calls that drop mid-conversation, texts that need confirming and re-confirming to know whether they arrived, and call logs that do not update, so you cannot even tell who you missed.
The uncomfortable part is when you find out. Nobody discovers a silent app at the moment it fails. You discover it at a no-show, or when someone finally emails to ask whether you are still practising.
Start with the phone's settings, not the app's. In the great majority of cases the app is being silenced by the operating system rather than failing on its own, and the fix is three toggles.
Check, in this order: notification permissions for the app (including the permission to make sound and to show on the lock screen), battery optimisation or low-power mode, whether the app is exempt from being put to sleep in the background, and whether a focus mode or do-not-disturb schedule is quietly filtering it. On Android the battery-optimisation setting is the usual culprit; on iPhone it is more often notification settings or a focus mode.
If all of that is clean and it still misses calls, the problem is delivery rather than settings — the call is arriving over the internet and the notification is not getting through in time. That is a genuine limitation of app-based lines, not a misconfiguration, and it is the most consistently reported complaint about every product in this category. Reviewers describe missed calls because the app did not ring, calls that drop mid-conversation, texts that need confirming and re-confirming to know whether they arrived, and call logs that do not update, so you cannot even tell who you missed.
The uncomfortable part is when you find out. Nobody discovers a silent app at the moment it fails. You discover it at a no-show, or when someone finally emails to ask whether you are still practising.
Why apps miss calls when a phone doesn't
A mobile call arrives over the carrier network and the phone is built to prioritise it above everything else. An app-based call arrives as a data notification, and the operating system decides how urgently to wake the app.
That decision depends on battery state, network quality, how recently you opened the app, and a set of power-saving rules that change with each OS release. On a weak signal, or on hotel wifi, or after a week of not opening the app, the notification can arrive late or not at all.
This is why the same app can be flawless for one practitioner and unusable for another on a different handset, and why "it works on mine" is not a useful reply in any thread on the subject.
What to check, in order
Notification permissions. Sound on, lock screen on, time-sensitive or priority delivery on if the phone offers it.
Battery optimisation. Set the app to unrestricted, or exempt it from sleeping in the background.
Focus modes and schedules. A sleep schedule you set up two years ago silences everything and never tells you.
The app's own settings. Ringtone, do-not-disturb hours, and any per-device ring setting if the account is on more than one device.
Data connection. If the app supports receiving calls over the mobile network as well as data, turn that on.
Log in again. Notification tokens expire. Signing out and back in is crude and it fixes a surprising share of cases.
Test it weekly. Ring your practice number from another phone. Put it in the calendar. This is the only step that catches a failure before a client does.
What to do while it is broken
Give people a second route and say so. A voicemail greeting that names an email address or a booking link means a silent app costs you a delay rather than a disappearance. Reviewers of these products say exactly this, in almost those words: you need a backup way for clients to reach you.
If the failure is intermittent, forward the line to a number that rings by carrier — your own handset, if it must be — until it is resolved. A temporary loss of separation is better than a week of untraced missed calls.
When to stop trying
There is a point at which this is not worth debugging, and the honest answer is to stop.
If you have run through the checklist twice, the app still misses calls, and the work you do makes a missed call a clinical problem rather than an inconvenience, buy a carrier line. A second line on your existing mobile plan, or a cheap second handset, rings because the phone network makes it ring. It costs more per month than most apps, it does nothing else useful, and on pure reliability it is better than every app-based product on the market including this one.
That trade is a real trade, so make it deliberately: what you lose is the transcription, the automatic reply, the shared inbox and the ability to leave the line behind on a Friday. What you gain is a phone that rings.
What to ask before you switch to a different app
Not "is it reliable" — every vendor says yes. Ask what happens on Android with battery optimisation on, whether calls can be delivered over the mobile network as a fallback, whether the call log is authoritative when the app misses a call, and how you reach a human when it breaks. That last one has its own page, because it is where most of these stories actually end.
About Rivet
Rivet is a Canadian practice line built for therapists — a separate number for calls, texts and voicemail, with video sessions and clinical tools in the same place. Your data stays in Canada, and transcription runs on Rivet's own hardware rather than a third-party AI service.
One plan, $65 CAD a month, everything included. Fourteen-day trial, no card.