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I'm creating a webapp to be used by iOS users, but some phone numbers in the database need to have extensions added on. Is there any way to modify the tel:// URL scheme to include a pause or wait?

Thanks in advance!

esqew
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2 Answers2

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You can use 'p' to pause, for example, tel:12345678#123. By changing '#' to 'p' (or comma) will cause pause for extension.

tel:12345678#123  // original tel number

tel:12345678p123  // after changed for tel scheme
tel:12345678,123  // Use comma instead
AechoLiu
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    On iPhone5, "p" is being replaced with "7" on the dialer, any ideas what might have caused this? When I used "," it works fine though... – schystz Mar 06 '13 at 14:03
  • This did not work for me on my Pixel 3XL. With Google Voice it told me that it could not recognize the format of the phone number. When I used my regular carrier number it made the call but did ignore everything at the first `p` and beyond. Using a comma `,` worked perfectly. – David Baucum May 08 '20 at 17:49
  • RFC suggests `p` is the right character to pause in dialing. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2806#section-2.5.6 – deed02392 Sep 27 '22 at 21:59
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Try using a comma instead of any letters. Back in the days of modem dialing, we used the comma to represent a pause but you may need to place two of them back to back to be sure the call is picked up before the extension is dialed. There is no way to tell your phone how to detect when to enter an extension, and menus may change so I would recommend just leaving the extension out anyway.

Joseph Clovis
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