From the course: iOS 16: iPhone and iPad Essential Training

Make video calls with FaceTime

From the course: iOS 16: iPhone and iPad Essential Training

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Make video calls with FaceTime

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- [Instructor] Built into all iOS devices is a feature called FaceTime, which is an app for audio and video chatting with others. It's a great way to have a face-to-face conversation with someone when you can't be in the same room with them. In order to place a FaceTime call, callers have to be on an iOS device or a Mac connected to a wifi or cellular network. It should be enabled by default, but you can check your settings by going to settings, to FaceTime and here just make sure the FaceTime switch is enabled. People will be able to reach you on FaceTime via your phone number or your Apple ID, or through any of the emails associated with your ID listed here. Now, if you see a message to sign in with your Apple ID here, be sure to do so if you want the ability to be able to be contacted through your Apple ID in addition to your phone number. Now, one way to make a FaceTime call is to open the FaceTime app. On this main screen you'll see a list of your previous calls, so if the person you want to call is listed here, you can just tap their name to call them again or tap the new FaceTime button and search your contacts for the person you're calling. Notice you get a couple suggestions here, but you can also just start typing someone's name. If a suggestion appears and it's the right person, you can just tap their name to complete that field. Now if you want to start a group FaceTime chat, you can add another person by tapping the plus button, but I'm going to stick with a one-on-one call for now. Now with the contact selected you can choose between making a FaceTime video call or a FaceTime audio call. FaceTime audio calls are like regular phone calls, but the audio quality is much higher and you can make the calls over wifi, which is great if you're in an area with poor cell phone reception. And you just tap the little green phone button here to place a FaceTime audio call. But I'm going to call Nick on video in this case. So I'll tap the larger FaceTime button. That puts me on screen so I can get myself positioned while we wait for Nick to answer. Now the person you're calling does have to accept on their end. In this case, Nick did accept. So hey Nick, how's it going? - Hello. - So now we're seeing each other and we're talking to each other in real time. So there are a lot of options that are available for things you can do while you're on a FaceTime call. For example, I'm currently using portrait orientation but you can also rotate your phone to landscape orientation. And this might be useful if you're in a room with multiple people and you want to make sure there's enough room to see everybody in the frame. I'm just here by myself right now, though, so I'm going to switch that back to portrait orientation. Now, you can also move this thumbnail of yourself around on screen if it happens to be blocking anything, as well. If you tap on the screen, that makes your own thumbnail and image a little bit bigger. And that also shows the FaceTime controls. So for example, I can tap the microphone button here and now I'm muted. So Nick can still see me, but he can't hear anything I'm saying. Now, muting can be especially useful in group FaceTime chats so people can't hear you or any background noises until you unmute your mic, which I'll do now. And now Nick should be able to hear me again. - I do. - And then similarly, we have the camera button so I can actually turn off my camera feed. Now, Nick, you can still hear me correct? - That's right. - So this might be a situation where I don't feel like being on camera, but we still need to communicate. I can turn that off, but I can also very easily turn that back on. Now, next to that we have the screen sharing button and this allows you to share whatever is on your screen to the person you're talking to. Now, this is currently disabled on my phone because of the way I'm recording this movie, but it's a great feature to show someone exactly what you're looking at on your screen. Now the screen showing button is also where you can access the share play options. Share play is a feature that lets you share content from share play enabled apps. So you can both watch or read content together in real time. So for example, you can see some of the apps that I have installed that I could share. So for example, Nick and I maybe want to watch the same show on Hulu. I could select Hulu and we could actually watch it together and see each other on screen at the same time. It's kind of a cool way to watch a show together. Now there are also some controls that are available when you tap your own thumbnail and we bring it up larger like this. For example, we saw that FaceTime defaults to the front facing camera, but you can switch cameras with this button in the lower right-hand corner. So I can show Nick the cool toys that are on my desk and the mess cables that I have back there. Can switch that back. We also have this effects button in the lower left-hand corner. That gives you a wide range of effects you can choose from. So I can do something like this, but I probably don't want to keep that on. Turn that off. Also, in the upper left-hand corner, if your phone supports it, you'll find the portrait mode button and that blurs your background, which you can see there. And that makes you stand out a little bit more on screen. And the button in the upper right-hand corner just shrinks your thumbnail back down to size again so you can see the person you're talking to. Now, also on screen we see this little white button and that lets you take a screenshot during your FaceTime chat. Now, just be aware that both you and the person you're talking to will see a notification that you took a FaceTime photo. And if you switch to your photos application, into your camera roll, you can see that image has shown up here. Also, notice that switching to other apps lets us continue our FaceTime call. So Nick and I can continue to see and hear each other, even though I'm doing other things on my phone. And I can tap his video to go back to the main FaceTime call. All right, I'm going to say goodbye to Nick for a moment. Thanks for helping out, Nick. - No problem. - And we'll talk to you soon. So I tap the X button and we've hung up. So, initiating a FaceTime chat is simply a matter of opening the app and finding the name, email or phone number of the person you want to call. You can also initiate a call from anywhere you can find your contacts, such as in the phone app or the contacts app. For instance, I'll open up the phone app and here I can see Nick's contact info. And notice there's a FaceTime button here, which I could tap to start a FaceTime call right from here. And we can place both a video or an audio FaceTime call from here. All right, so that's how to initiate a FaceTime call. Let's see what it looks like when you receive a FaceTime call. All right, so I'm getting a notification that Nick wants to start a FaceTime chat. So I'll tap that and then tap join. So you do have to accept a call. And once we do that, after a moment, there's Nick. Hey again, Nick. - Hello. - So that's pretty much it. Everything else here is pretty much the same once you're inside the FaceTime video chat. Thanks again, Nick. - No problem, and we'll talk to you soon. - All right, so that's how to place and receive FaceTime calls.

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