Almost a year ago, Google started working on bringing call recording support to the Google Phone app. The feature rolled out to the company's Pixel lineup soon thereafter, followed by several Nokia devices and a couple of Xiaomi phones. Now, Google is working on improving the feature to help you automatically record calls from unknown numbers.

An APK teardown can often predict features that may arrive in a future update of an application, but it is possible that any of the features we mention here may not make it in a future release. This is because these features are currently unimplemented in the live build and may be pulled at any time by the developers in a future build.

A teardown of the latest update for the Google Phone app (version 59) has revealed new strings of code that highlight the upcoming functionality. As you can see, the strings mention some new dialog messages that will alert users of the feature once it rolls out with a future update.

        <string name="non_contact_always_record_dialog_message">"You or the other person in your call might be somewhere that requires everyone to consent to being recorded. Everyone will be notified ahead of time that the call is being recorded. It's up to you to follow laws about recording conversations. Recordings are stored only on your phone."</string>
<string name="non_contact_always_record_dialog_title">Always record calls with numbers not in your contacts?</string>
<string name="non_contact_always_record_negative_button_label">Cancel</string>
<string name="non_contact_always_record_positive_button_label">Always record</string>
<string name="non_contact_toggle_key">non_contact_toggle_key</string>
<string name="non_contact_toggle_label">Numbers not in your contacts</string>

The first string about the feature mentions a disclaimer, which states:

"You or the other person in your call might be somewhere that requires everyone to consent to being recorded. Everyone will be notified ahead of time that the call is being recorded. It's up to you to follow laws about recording conversations. Recordings are stored only on your phone."

Following the disclaimer, users will see a confirmation dialog asking them if they wish to turn on automatic call recording for numbers not in their contact list. It will include two options — "Always record" and "Cancel" — to enable or disable the feature. The strings also mention a toggle for the feature, which should show up in the app settings once the feature rolls out.

As of now, Google hasn't released any information about this new call recording feature. We'll update this post as soon as it starts rolling out with a future Google Phone update. It's worth noting that while you can install the Google Phone app on almost all Android devices, the call recording feature is only available on select phones in certain regions.


Thanks to PNF Software for providing us a license to use JEB Decompiler, a professional-grade reverse engineering tool for Android applications.