From the course: iOS 13 and iPadOS: iPhone and iPad Essential Training

Make video calls with FaceTime

From the course: iOS 13 and iPadOS: iPhone and iPad Essential Training

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Make video calls with FaceTime

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- [Narrator] Built in to 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. Now, in order to use FaceTime, callers have to be on an IOS device or a Mac, connected to a WiFi or a cellular network. But other than that, there's really nothing else to set up. You can go into Settings here, to FaceTime and make sure the FaceTime switch is on. But it should be on by default. People will be able to reach you on FaceTime via your Apple ID or through your phone number or any of the other emails associated with your ID listed here. 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 we can tap the plus button and search your contacts for the person you're calling. So, select Nick here. Now, if you want to start a group FaceTime chat, just add another person. I'm going to stick with a one-to-one call for now. With a contact selected, you can choose between making a FaceTime video call or a FaceTime audio call. A FaceTime audio call is like a regular phone call 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. I'm going to call Nick on video in this case, so I'm going to pick up my phone and tap "Video." That's going to place the call and I can get myself centered onscreen. I can see it's connecting. Now Nick has to accept on his end, and he has, so there's Nick. Hey Nick, how's it going? - Going pretty good. - Thanks for helping me out here today. - No problem. - Alright, so now Nick and I are in a FaceTime call. He can see and hear me and I can see and hear him. Now there are several things you can do during a FaceTime call. For example, I can tap the screen to show controls, and tap to hide them again. I can also see this preview of myself in the upper right hand corner. I can move that around if necessary, in case it's covering something on his side of the conversation that I need to see. I can also move my phone into landscape orientation, which is useful in case I'm trying to frame up more than one person here and I need the extra room, but because it's just me I'm going to switch back to portrait orientation. Now, if I bring up those controls again by tapping the screen, you can see we have several buttons here. For example, there's a button here for "flip" which allows me to flip to my rear-facing camera so I can show Nick all the cool toys on my desk here. We also have a "mute" button so if I tap that, Nick can no longer hear me, but I can still hear him. And if I turn that off, he can hear me again. I'm going to switch that back to the front-facing camera once more. There's also this "effects" button here, which gives you access to all these different apps that you can swipe through to check out. For example we have Animoji here, so I can select one of these characters, and that will actually place this character in my video. Alright, so here I am now as a Giraffe, which again, this is obviously perfect for business meetings. I'm going to turn that off, we can close that. I can tap the image of myself to go back to the chat. Now notice, we also have this floating white button here on the screen, this allows you to take a screenshot of the conversation. Nick can actually do this on his side, too, but if either of us presses this button to take a screenshot we'll both see a notification saying the other person has taken a screenshot. So, for example, could you take a quick screenshot on your side Nick? - Sure, I'll bring up my on-screen controls, press that button. - And see? We see this notification that says Nick took a FaceTime photo. And if I do the same thing, Nick also sees that notification, and I see it on my side. Now, these photos end up in your Camera Role so if I go in there, there it is. It pops up, there's the photo I took. Now, this actually illustrates we can do other things while we're on a FaceTime call. Because Nick, you can still hear me, but can't see me, correct? - [Nick] That's right. - [Narrator] If at any time, I want to go back to the conversation, I can just tap this green bubble around the time and that takes me back to the conversation, and Nick can see me again. Now, if I bring up these controls, we can also slide up on them to reveal other controls. For example, here's the "Camera Off" button. So, once again, Nick can no longer see me but he can hear me. Turn that back. And we also have an audio button, here, currently labeled "Speaker," which allows me to mute, but if you're connected to other devices like a blutooth headset, you could switch to that if you wanted to have a conversation over your headset. But, that just about does it for these controls. Nick, thanks for helping me out again. - No problem. - And we'll talk to you soon! - See ya. - [Narrator] 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 find your contacts, such as in the "Phone" app, or the "Contacts" app. For instance, here in the "Phone" app, I can look for Nick again. Notice, there is a FaceTime button here, and I can start a call by tapping the camera icon or I can choose an audio only FaceTime call by tapping the phone icon above FaceTime, there. This can be very useful if you know both parties are on WiFi Networks and you don't want or need to video chat. You can, instead, have a FaceTime audio chat, entirely over WiFi, and neither of you will be using any of your cellular minutes. Alright, so that's how to initiate a FaceTime call. Let's see what it looks like when you receive a FaceTime call. Alright, so I can see that Nick is calling me. So, if we would like to FaceTime, I can pick up my phone and tap "Accept". And, now we're back in the call. Hey Nick. - Hey. - And at this point, it's pretty much the same. All of the controls are the same, and we can do everything we could do before. So, I think that just about does it. Thanks again, Nick. - No problem. - [Narrator] And I'll tap the "End" button. Alright, so that's how to place and receive FaceTime calls.

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