Troubleshooting: Remove “Stuck” Voicemail Icon
If you have a voicemail icon in your Android notification bar that won’t go away even if you clear all notifications and reboot your phone, and you have a 3rd-party voicemail app like Google Voice, here’s what probably happened and how to fix it:
Applications like Google Voice are set up to actually bypass your cell phone carrier’s built-in voicemail. When that bypass fails for some reason (and it’s only happened once to me over several months), someone may be able to leave you a voicemail on your carrier’s voicemail box, which is rendered inaccessible to you by the 3rd-party voicemail app, so your phone continues to notify you of the new voicemail.
Here’s how I fixed mine, which uses Google Voice:
- Go to https://www.google.com/voice#inbox and click the “Settings” link at the top. Then click the link next to your phone number that says “Deactivate Google voicemail on this phone” and follow the deactivation instructions.
- Dial your standard voicemail by dialing *86 or using the voicemail button to the left of the green phone icon in the phone interface. (You will have to remember your old voicemail passcode if you had one!)
- Listen to the message and press 7 to delete it. You’ll notice the notification disappears at this point.
- Don’t forget to reactivate Google Voice! Do the same thing you did in step 1, but this time the link will say “Activate Google voicemail”.
That’s it! Now you’ve gotten rid of that pesky notification icon and you can move on with your life 🙂
If this happens to you often or you just want to avoid it ever happening again, you can call your carrier and ask them to deactivate your standard voicemail entirely.
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I have this problem, but not with Google Voice. I found that if I cycle through saved messages after checking new ones it disappears without fail. Annoying, but it works and it helps me stay on top of my messages. 😉
worked like a charm!
Great, glad it worked for you!
Perfect fix…Thanks for the info.
Great! Thanks for the feedback!
it worked – thank you!
Thanks!
this worked..
when i clicked on the “new voicemail” in the notification bar, it dialed the VM number & asked me to enter the 10-digit number of the person i’m trying to reach. I entered my own number & then it asked me to enter the VM password thrice. I did nothing & the VM icon in the notification bar was gone after a ‘thank you’ message.