# Sifter - Spam SMS Filter — user reviews

> 14 indexed App Store user reviews of Sifter by 磊 汪, rated 4.10/5 from 108 ratings.

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/sifter-spam-sms-filter/id1265348258/reviews
- App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/sifter-spam-sms-filter/id1265348258.md
- Rating breakdown: 5★ 77 · 4★ 6 · 3★ 1 · 2★ 3 · 1★ 21

## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated)

### 1/5 — Worked for a bit

*2026-06-16*

Worked for a short while and then they figured out how to get around it bc now I’m getting blackmail messages: “you want the political messaging to stop?!” types of messages

### 1/5 — Useless

*2025-09-27*

Does not work and instructions are in Chinese

### 1/5 — Far from effortless

*2025-03-30*

Almost completely incomprehensible UX. No instructions anywhere. Why not have a new option in individual spam messages to send the number to the blacklist? No way to do this without manually and awkwardly copy pasting the number into the app. Ridiculous. What a letdown and waste of money.

### 1/5 — Tried to blockPolitical ads

*2024-10-10*

Doesn’t work!!! Still getting just as many!
I’ve put in all the keywords.
Waste of $3!
Very dissatisfied

### 1/5 — Utterly Useless

*2024-09-24*

Incomprehensible instructions. Lame.

### 1/5 — Not doing what it is supposed to do

*2024-08-09*

We have put several keywords into “blacklist” that should block texts that come in using any of those words, and yet texts are still coming through with those exact words in them. This is precisely what the app is designed to prevent.

### 1/5 — So far it just hasn’t worked.

*2024-07-24*

So far, I have tried to give it words to blacklist and when I have had people try texting me using those words the text still comes through. So either it isn’t working, or it isn’t user-friendly enough for me to be able to figure out how it works when it looks like I am doing everything right.

**Developer response:** the iOS Message Filter extension can only block messages from unknown senders, so you cannot block messages from friends who are already in your contacts.

### 1/5 — Useless app, without any help or explanation

*2018-01-23*

This seems to be a Chinese fraud with the connivance of Apple.
The app may be functional if you know what to do. But there is no help at all in the app and on their site.
Nowhere is it explained what the support types are and how they can be distinguished. 
Similarly what are the URL Schemes and what do they mean. What about 3D touch shortcuts - they do not explain how and where they can be used.
And they talk about expressions but do not explain any.
I tried to contact them on email but they do not reply.

### 2/5 — 为啥要强制iCloud上传？

*2020-08-14*

为啥要强制开启iCloud上传？不开启就不能用啊……

### 3/5 — Anything to stop the texts

*2025-01-18*

I’ll give it a go!
It’s not very counterintuitive though! Any tutorials out there?

## Most praised reviews (4 highest-rated)

### 5/5 — Delete spam after detection

*2026-07-16*

The only way the developer can make this app better, and it’s practically perfect already, is to find a way to delete the spam texts on the phone after it detects them. That way they won’t flow to the Mac.

### 5/5 — This is a miracle app

*2026-06-04*

I have gone thru several apps, this is the first one that actually worked. It was easy to set up a profile for me and now I finally have no political text messages and no more about medicare. I have already recommended it to several other people. Now if I could only find something that worked as well for telemarketing phone calls.

### 5/5 — It Works

*2025-03-26*

Works great. You must enable ‘Filter Unknown Senders’ and add numbers you trust to your contacts. I use it to block incessant political campaign spam texts.

### 5/5 — Beyond Useful

*2023-08-17*

One of, if not the only app in the App Store allowing you to block those annoying, repetitive, unsolicited texts that are sent with click-bait links in hopes you’ll access a Trojan horse or other nefarious link.  The “regex” area is a bit difficult if you don’t understand regex, but there are still several other ways to block these texts in bulk, the easiest being by copy and pasting +the+text+you+want+to+block in ⬅️ this format. Then all texts sent after that fit that format will be automatically blocked.

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*Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-08-27.*