Group Video Chat Using FaceTime On Your Mac, iPhone Or iPad

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you how to do a group FaceTime call.

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Now it's fairly easy to start a group FaceTime call. Basically what you do is you start a regular FaceTime call with one other person and then you or that other person just adds more people to the call.

You're going to start off just like you're making a FaceTime call to one other person. So I'm going to run the FaceTime app here and then in the sidebar I'm going to see my recent calls that I made. I can select one of those to start video chatting with that one person. I can also enter a name, email address, or phone number here. For an email address it should be somebody's Apple ID. A phone number should be an iPhone phone number or the name could be the name of somebody in your Contacts where you have their Apple ID or iPhone phone numbers. You can use anyone of those.

So I'm going to enter in an Apple ID here. When I hit Return I should see both audio and video available. If video isn't available that just simply means they don't have the capability for video chatting. Maybe it's just a phone number where they haven't hooked up FaceTime or something like that. Maybe they're not even using an Apple product and that's just a regular phone number. 

I'm going to hit Video and it should call that other computer, which in this case is a MacBook Pro sitting next to me. So I'm going to get the notification there and I'm going to Accept. Then I'll see the camera for that other person show up here. I can see myself here at the top right. I can see the other person here and if I look over at that MacBook Pro I'll see the opposite. So it's just a simple regular FaceTime with one other person. 

So how do I start a group FaceTime? Well, all I need to do is add somebody else. So here on a Mac you can click on this little button here to bring up a sidebar. If I were to make this Full Screen, so I'll hit this button here, then bringing up the sidebar would actually bring it up in this blank space here. I can hit Add Person. So I can hit plus and now I can enter in somebody else here. So let me enter in for an iPad that is right here. You can see I get a green add button here at the bottom. I'll do that and that's going to ring the iPad that I've got. Now once I've joined that on the iPad you'll see that camera appear here. So now you can see I've got a three person chat going on.

Now when you're asked to enter in Apple ID or phone number there you can enter in more than one. So way back at the beginning instead of starting with one person you could have entered two, or three, or everybody that you wanted to join the call. Then just started the call by inviting everybody at once instead of starting with just one. The same thing here. When you add a new person to a call you can add two or three or as many as you want and invite several people with one click of the Join button.

So, I am at the bottom right hand corner here, which is me on my MacPro. Then I've got me right here that's on the MacBook Pro, and then I've got me right here that's on the iPad. You could see your have the two windows here. I could double click on one and it actually puts it in the center and fades the other one away. Just click outside of that to show them all. Double click on that one and it brings that there as well.

Now anybody that's in on this group chat could add somebody else. If somebody else were to call into one of us it would simply ask us to end the current call and go to the new one or to Decline that new call. It has to be somebody in the group already. So I'm going to click here and Add a Person and add someone else. I'm going to add my iPhone now. Hit Add. That's going to ring on my iPhone. I'm going to accept that. So now I have four people in on this call. Let me close the sidebar here and you could see I've got these three windows.

So I can now choose which one I want to look at mainly by clicking on it. That one will get a little larger than the rest. If I click this little button here on the bottom right hand corner of each window it puts that one in the center. But otherwise I just get a slightly larger version of the one that I want. This here is what it looks like on my iPhone. So you can see it stacks them up vertically, of course, because it's much more vertical space. If I turn my iPhone sideways this is how I get it. Always the smallest one is my own camera and the larger ones are for the other people I'm talking to. I can tap on anyone of those to center more on that one person. This is what it looks like on my iPad. So very similar to how it looks full screen on the Mac. I can tap on anyone of those as well and I have basically the same buttons. FaceTime is extremely similar between iPhone, iPad, and Mac. 

Now for anybody to exit the call all they need to do is hit this red button here and they'll be out of the call. The other people won't be kicked out at all. So they'll be able to stay in there. As a matter of fact the last person in the room will still be there in the room in case somebody is going to come back in and rejoin the room in a few minutes.

Let's say you want to start this whole thing on your iPhone. So I go in the FaceTime app on my iPhone and I can select a previous conversation there or I can hit the Plus button at the top and I can enter in an Apple ID here. Once I do I can see the Video button there at the bottom. So I can start it right here on my iPhone and I'll answer that call here on my iPad. So now I'm chatting from iPhone to iPad here. Now if I wanted to add somebody extra on my iPhone I could tap and you can see I have those buttons on the bottom. If I grab the handle above those buttons and drag up and you could see I've got options here where I could Add a Person.

So I could tap that and then add somebody else. If I tap the Return key I should see Add Person to FaceTime at the bottom as long as that's a valid FaceTime Apple ID. I could tap that and answer that on, in this case, my desktop Mac. Now I could see the three of us talking here. On the iPad it's similar. You should see a little box here on the bottom with those buttons. If you don't see it just tap on some blank space on the screen and it should come up. I could drag the little top handle there. Bring that up and there's Add Person.

The big problem with using FaceTime like this is that everybody has to have an Apple product. FaceTime only works on iPhones, iPads, and Macs. So if somebody in the group is say using a Windows machine or an Android phone then you really can't do group FaceTime. You're going to have to go with another solution like Skype, Zoom, or Goggle Hangouts. Another thing to look out for is when you join a call sometimes you join and you're straight in with video. Other times you can join the call but still have to press a green video camera button in order to enable your camera. So if nobody can see you look for that green button. Or if somebody else joins but you don't see video of them maybe tell them to look for that green camera button.

A cool feature is if you want to start up that same group FaceTime conversation with the same people you should see it in your Recents list. You can join that call and then the other people will get notifications and they could join it as well. You don't have to go and re-add everybody or remember who was on that call.