PSA for Mac OS X users on older machines like Lion and Mountain Lion: if you’re stuck on Skype 6.15, and can’t do video chat after the Microsoft’s July 3, 2017 breaking update …
Apple Facetime is a free video chat application that comes with Mac OS X.
Some tips for using Facetime:
- It seems to use an entire CPU core, and will quickly drain your battery, so plug in.
- To add a new contact, you need to know their Apple ID email or their iPhone number. For phone numbers, use the full international prefix with 0 or 1, but without +.
- By default if Facetime has a window visible (ie. it’s opened), it will enable the camera and consume power. To prevent that, click on the yellow dot to minimize it (ie. background it.)
- To make Facetime wait for calls, minimize it (click on the yellow dot) or leave Contacts open.
- If Facetime is not for you, try iMessage/Messages/iChat.
- Facetime on iPhone is paused automatically when they switch apps and shows a “Paused” message. Facetime is not paused on Mac OS X.