Disable digits being recognized as phone numbers in Calendar notes?

TidBITS Talk
1

Is there a way to turn off this feature that thinks my non-phone # note is a phone # in iPhone’s Calendar app?

https://matrix.zimage.com/_matrix/media/v3/download/ross154.net/TUPugDCgqOhQuCZqJvnSXIwS/IMG_0298.jpg for a screen shot from my iPhone 12 mini’s iOS v18.5.

Thank you for reading and hopefully answering soon. :)

2

Is the “non-phone” number in a phone field? If it is in a phone field it’s entirely possible that the number recognizer accepted it because it tries to deal with worldwide phone systems which have varying numbers of digits.

Dave

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3

Apple operating systems use a software framework called DataDetection to recognize common data types.

As far as I can tell, there is no way to disable a “Data Detector” on an iPhone unless a developer specifically allows it.

Also as far as I can tell, Apple doesn’t allow it in its own iPhone apps. (There is a little more flexibility on macOS.)

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4

No, it is in Notes field as shown in my screen shot.

5

So, it appears data detectors operate there, too. Makes sense—organizations often include phone numbers in the notes field for events.

If it really bothers you, just insert an obvious non phone number character to break it up: 7739*214746.

Dave

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6

Thank you all. I left a feedback to Apple to give us option not to make these non-phone numbers not as phone numbers.