Maybe you’ve had enough of FaceTime. After more than a year of the pandemic, you’ve gotten the vaccine, waited at least two weeks, and are ready to see people face to face. But not so fast. You still have far-flung friends and others you want to see virtually. And yesterday at WWDC, Apple added plenty of new features to the app that will keep you chatting. Here’s what to look forward to in FaceTime when iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 arrive in the fall.
Sound Options
Ever wish you could drown out that background sound? Voice isolation mode brings your voice to the forefront. If you want who you’re chatting with to have the full audio experience, then you can select Wide Spectrum to leave in ambient sound. Also, calls that have more than one participant will seem more natural than before because Apple has incorporated spatial audio, which sends sound from the position of the speaker on your screen.
Portrait Perfect
That great look your photos get when you use Portrait mode is coming to FaceTime so you can be in sharp focus while your background is a pleasant blur.
Boxed In
Loving the Zoom life? On FaceTime, group calls are getting grids. Each person on the call will appear in a tile, with six displayed at a time, and the current speaker will be highlighted.
Share and Share Alike
SharePlay is arguably the biggest new FaceTime feature. You can share your screen, which is super helpful if you’re offering some tech help or you want to gossip about your texts. And streaming TV shows and movies with friends is easy with synced playback and controls to make sure you’re all on the same page, er screen. For video, it will work with Apple TV+, Disney+, ESPN+, HBO Max, Hulu, MasterClass, Paramount+, Pluto TV, TikTok, and Twitch. If you’re not as hyped as you expected about the return of Turntable.fm and just want to share some songs with friends on a call, use Apple Music.
Schedule Time (With Android Friends)
Nobody likes an unnanounced FaceTime call. Scheduling lets you send out an invite with a link so that everyone involved knows when to put on their face for FaceTime. More importantly, those links can be shared with friends on Android or Windows devices; they can join in via the Chrome or Edge browser.
