Please make improvements to Facetime.app!

[212rikanmofo]

One thing I can't stand about Facetime is that when you're in a call, it will automatically lower the volume of everything else. I wish we can have more control over this. Sometimes I want to play a song in iTunes so that the person I'm facetiming with can hear it, and etc.

I wish you can set Facetime to start in Landscape mode instead of portrait. And I really hope we can make facetime group calls via video and audio. Kind of like Skype, where we can have multiple people. Would make it awesome to talk to all my friends at once.

I would also love to see a chatbox option as well for those of us who want to type or paste some text, and a way for us to share and control each other's screen, great for collaborative work. I know we have built-in screen sharing, but I would like to see this feature being built into the core of Facetime.

I feel like such an awesome app is being neglected. Facetime and iMessage are the reason I love the Apple ecosystem so much. Please give Facetime some love Apple and improve it!

You're falling behind Skype now... and I really don't want to use that.

 

[boston04and07]

Totally agree with all of this. FaceTime hasn't changed much since it's introduction, which is a shame because there's definitely room for improvement, as you've said. Multi caller FaceTime is at the top of the list for me too, and I really can't believe they haven't added that yet. I remember multi caller iChat as being a headlining feature when I got my first MacBook in 2008...there was even a photo of that on the box the MacBook came in, I remember. Hell, even Modern Family was able to figure out a way to smoothly integrate multi caller FaceTime in that episode they did entirely on the computer.

Plus, it'd be great if FaceTime callers could leave voicemail. Also, FaceTime on the Mac and iPad seriously needs access to regular voicemails left on the iPhone as a part of phone call continuity. It's great that we can get phone calls on other devices, but as someone who gets a ridiculous amount of spam calls, I need voicemail access on those other devices in order for wifi calling to be actually useful. They could even just spin off the phone stuff into a separate Phone app on the iPad and Mac and leave FaceTime for actual FaceTime calls, for simplicity's sake, and that'd be fine with me too. Either way, that missing functionality really needs to come soon.

 

[212rikanmofo]

Yes that would be great too. What I really would like to see is a phone.app on macOS! Complete with dialer and all... now that we can make calls from our Macs, it would make more sense to include an app or at least some kind of dial pad so we can manually make calls.

 

[boston04and07]

Yes that would be great too. What I really would like to see is a phone.app on macOS! Complete with dialer and all... now that we can make calls from our Macs, it would make more sense to include an app or at least some kind of dial pad so we can manually make calls.

It really would make things a lot simpler, wouldn't it? I really wonder how many people realize they can dial out or even make calls on their Mac. As it is now it's not really apparent to the casual user, which is pretty unfortunate. It sort of reminds me how HomeKit didn't really have a UI on iOS for the longest time, but how has the new Home app - I bet a lot of people will play around with home automation now that the UI is right in front of them. Phone calls on macOS are in a similar situation - the ability is there but sort of hidden and not intuitive. I hope they address this before long!

 

[Malus120]

How about just making it work with Picture in picture please. This is something they should've had in the mac version at release. I want facetime video, to stay on top, and to follow me as I move through different spaces. I really don't think it's too much to ask for. Maybe it's already implemented?

 

[boston04and07]

How about just making it work with Picture in picture please. This is something they should've had in the mac version at release. I want facetime video, to stay on top, and to follow me as I move through different spaces. I really don't think it's too much to ask for. Maybe it's already implemented?

I'm not sure, but I'll definitely be watching for that in the betas. It would seem like a strange thing to leave out.