New Mac Video Conferencing Features

macOS Sonoma introduces a unified menu for video and microphone controls in the menu bar. This includes the ability to trigger reaction animations and combine your screen and camera input to create a presenter overlay. For the most part these work in FaceTime but also in other apps like Zoom.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to use the new Video Conferencing features in macOS Sonoma, both with FaceTime and with Zoom. 
MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 1000 supporters. Go to MacMost.com/patreon. There you can read more about it. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts.
Now there is some great new video conferencing and presentation features in macOS Sonoma. It can be tricky to find these if you don't know where to look. So, I'm going to show you first how to use these in FaceTime. So let's start a FaceTime conversation with somebody else. I've got a demo account here that I'm going to connect to another Mac running another demo account. So let's place the FaceTime call. Here we go. As a stand-in for the other person I've got this apple. Now I've got normal FaceTime things going on here. I've got my little preview window here with all the normal controls. But what is new is that you can now control a lot of things that have to do with the camera. and presenting through the Menu Bar. See this little icon that appears here at the top. This only shows up when you're actually on a call. So if I click on it it will show me all the different things that are using either the camera or the microphone and I can choose which one I want to control. 
I've got Screen Recording going on for this tutorial so you see a few things up here. But under FaceTime I could see the call that I'm on and various controls here. Like, for instance, I can control the microphone. I can switch which microphone I want to use or Mute or allow the microphone. The same thing with the camera here. I have controls here for the camera. So, for instance, if your camera supports Center Stage then you can turn that On or Off. If your camera supports Portrait Mode or Studio Lighting you can turn that On and Off. You even have some controls here like for Studio Lighting, since my Studio Display does actually support it .You can see how I can adjust the brightness of the background there. 
Then you've got something new. Reactions. You go to that then you can see all the different reactions that you can trigger. Now the preview will be here. This is an effect on me, not on the other person. So if I click on this one you could see the little hearts. Notice how it even has a Show It To Me Here on the preview area inside of FaceTime. So I've got that. I've got, say, a Thumbs Up, and others. You could also trigger these using gestures. So, for instance, the heart could be done with a gesture like this and you can see that triggers it. A thumbs up, like that. You can do thumbs down a similar way. Balloons you can do a peace sign like that. For the storm clouds you can do double thumbs down like that. If you do double thumbs up then you get the fireworks. If you do this you get lasers. If you do double peace sign then you get confetti. So reactions are fun but mostly cosmetic. 
Let's take a look at something really useful. You can do Screen Sharing using this button right here. So in this case you can choose to share a window. The whole app which would include multiple windows if the app has them. Or your entire screen. So, for instance if I were to share the entire screen and choose this screen then you could see a preview of what I'm currently sharing here. Here's what it looks like for the other person. So what they would see on their end is a window that shows what is being shared. It is separate from the FaceTime window. So there are two windows now that they can arrange as they want. One showing what I'm sharing and one showing the normal FaceTime stuff. 
However, I can change to a Presenter Overlay. So there are two, small and large. This is what the small one looks like. If I look at it here in the Preview or right here you can see it puts me at the bottom left hand corner in a little circle there with my head kind of popping up and some space above it. So they will now not see me in their FaceTime window anymore. But they will see me in the Presentation window. So, the same thing with large. But large will actually put me in front with the full view and put the screen behind me. So this is what the other person sees in their Presentation window. So they can make this, of course, full screen if they wanted to by clicking on the Green button and that is a nice way for them to view it. They still have access to their Preview, right there, in their own FaceTime windows. They have two windows still. If I turn it Off here I get this.
Now let's stop sharing the screen and instead let's try sharing again but I'll choose just a window. But before I do that let's bring up a window to share. So I've got Keynote and I've got it set to Play in a Window, not full screen. So I'll play the slideshow. So now I've got my Keynote Presentation here in this window. I can make it little smaller. Maybe I'm doing other things on my screen as I present here in this window. If I decide to Share a window and just share this window now you can see this is what I'm currently sharing with the other person. This is what they see. They still see me in the FaceTime window and they have another window with the window I'm sharing. Now what if I change it to Small Presenter Overlay. This puts me on top of that window there. I see the Preview. They see a blank area in the FaceTime window but they can still use it for their own preview and control. But they see me here inside of the thing I'm sharing. If I switch to Large then they see this. Which is kind of nice. It's like a whiteboard. I can point to, you know, things on there like this to indicate stuff. So if I bring up another window, a Calendar Window here, and I add this window, I'll add the Calendar window by clicking on it. Now I've got both of these windows here and what they are going to see is a mixture of the two windows. So I can move them around. They won't see whatever I don't see. So if something goes below the bottom of the screen then it goes below the bottom of the sharing area. But otherwise they will see these two windows as I see them. But won't see any other windows I've got. They will just see a blank space behind things. 
Now Stop Sharing Window knows each window has got this little button up here and I could close the window. I can remove the window from the Sharing. Let's do that. I can do that for both of these. Another nice feature is you don't have to bring this up and use this and then click window and all that to share a window. If you want to share a window you can use the green button. As long as you are in FaceTime you could actually share the window or the entire app this way. So it jumps right into Sharing. Now I'm sharing this. You could see what the other person is seeing right here. I can do that using those green buttons and I can stop sharing it as well. 
Now how does this all work with Zoom. I started a Zoom meeting with that same other Mac in the other account. You could see I'm talking here and there is the apple as the other person. Now let's take this out of the normal full screen zoom mode here and let's say I want to share the screen. So I would do that starting here in Zoom. I click Share Screen and I could pick the window that I want or the Desktop. Now this only really works with sharing a Desktop. Sharing a window is kind of flaky. So I'm going to pick this Desktop here and share it. So now the other person sees my Desktop. Now once I've got this going I can use those same Overlays that I was using in FaceTime. So I'm going to click here on the Menu Bar, make sure Zoom is chosen here at the top, and it shows what I'm currently sharing. I can do the small presenter overly and there I am. I can see a preview down here and over here. This is what the other person sees. They see me presenting my screen here just like normal except I've got the nice presenter overlay which is really cool. That works in Zoom as well as FaceTime. It should work in other video conferencing apps like this as well. I can switch over here to Large overlay and you could see it works the same here. So I can use either one of these pretty nicely. 
Now let's turn Presenter Overlay off. Let's go and bring the Zoom controls in here and turn Off Screen Sharing. Now instead of sharing the entire screen I've got this Keynote window and I just want to Share that. So let's try it. I'm going to Share Screen and I'm going to say I just want to Share this window here. I'll Share it and then it shows what I'm sharing here. Now let's see what the other person sees. They see that entire window filling everything. That's great. But what if I try to use a Presenter Overlay. Well, I'm going to try to use the small one. You could see it is going to stick me relative to the entire screen not the window. So it doesn't really work well. If I do Large then it kind of works. This is something that may actually improve over time. Like we may actually see Zoom be able to do everything that FaceTime does perfectly or it is something that could just remain like this. It is really hard to say. But it is possible at least to share a window and kind of put yourself in it like that if you really want. 
So there's a lot of different options here. If you present either with FaceTime or Zoom or something else professionally then what I would do is I would experiment first. If you don't have a second computer around maybe find a friend that is willing to work with you. But having a second computer, it is an older computer that you can just create a separate account on in FaceTime or use it as a second personal Zoom conference and see what the other person sees when you try all of this. It really helps to be able to perfect your technique before you need to do a real presentation. Otherwise if you just need to use this in a more casual setting you can always experiment live while conferencing with your friends. 
Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 10 Responses to “New Mac Video Conferencing Features”

Dana Schwartz

1 year ago

Do both ends need to be Sonoma for FaceTime? I assume Sonoma not needed for Zoom, since it’s multiplatform.

Still seems complicated, non intuitive, and not really “Mac-like”. Definitely needs pre-use practice! (Don’t yell at me!)

Gary Rosenzweig

DanaI think most or all will work as long as you have Sonoma. The other person just gets a video feed.

Sheldon

Thanks bunches

tuqqer

On my M1 Mini with Sonoma, my Zoom video conference image freezes if I inadvertently trigger a Reaction by moving my hands around. It'll start the (unwanted) balloons or whatever, and then my image freezes (but audio continues to work). The only fix we've found so far is to quit out of Zoom and log back in. Also, there doesn't seem to be any way to completely disable Reactions in Zoom. You have to do it each time at the start of your Zoom calls via their row of buttons.

Barry Wallach

will this work with skype?

Barry: I think so. Some of it, maybe. I don't use Skype so I don't have it handy. Give it a try and report back.

Rick Calicura

I agree with Dana's critical comments. Seems complicated and will probably require quite a bit of pre-meeting practice. Otherwise, pretty useful once mastered.

David W Smith

This a potentially complicated topic, keeping all the options in mind, clicking windows, and being aware of what YOU are seeing as well as what THEY are seeing. And great kudos to you, Gary, for doing all this WHILE you were recording all this! That's a lot of juggling on your part. Very nice, and thank you for the info.

D. Sands

How do we create a second FaceTime account to use on a second computer for testing purposes?

D.: Lots of ways. One way is on that second Mac, create a new Mac user account. But while creating it, don't sign into your iCloud account, instead choose to make a new iCloud account. Then any time you want to test, switch to that secondary test Mac account.

Comments Closed.

New Mac Video Conferencing Features

Comments: 10 Responses to “New Mac Video Conferencing Features”

Welcome to MacMost

Free Weekly Newsletter

MacMost Online Courses

Keyboard Shortcuts PDF

Connect with MacMost

MacMost Sections

Popular Tutorials

Information