Apple has introduced some major improvements to FaceTime in iOS 15. This should not be surprising given the rise in the popularity of video calling services over the last year or two due to the pandemic. Below is a look at all the new features coming to FaceTime in iOS 15 on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
The new feature improvements that Apple is adding to FaceTime will make it a Zoom and Google Meet competitor in many ways. While you are still not going to use FaceTime for holding office meetings, the improvements will make your FaceTime calls with friends and family better.
All the New FaceTime Features in iOS 15
1. SharePlay
SharePlay is one of the biggest new additions to FaceTime in iOS 15. It will allow you to watch movies, TV shows, or listen to music while already on a FaceTime call with your friends or family.
2. Watch Together
Building on SharePlay, FaceTime in iOS 15 will also feature Watch Together. As the name suggests, it will let you stream movies and TV shows with sync playback controls for you and your friends or family with whom you are on a FaceTime call.
There’s also Listen together, which is the same thing, but for listening to music.
3. Screen Sharing
You will also be able to share your iPhone or iPad’s screen with your friends or family while on a FaceTime video call.
4. Spatial Audio
To offer a more natural FaceTime experience, Apple is bringing its Spatial Audio technology to it. So, on a FaceTime call, the voices of your friends and family members will come from the direction in which they are positioned on your screen.
5. Improved Voice Clarity
Your FaceTime calls will sound much better in iOS 15, thanks to voice isolation. This will isolate your voice from the background noise so that the other parties in a call can hear your voice with crystal clear quality.
There’s also the Wide Spectrum option that will leave the ambient noise as it is, if you are out and about and want other people on the video call to listen to it.
6. Grid View
Apple is debuting a new grid view for group FaceTime video calls, making group conversations with lots of people easier. The person speaking at any given time is already highlighted in the grid view so that you can easily distinguish who’s talking.
7. Portrait Mode
Don’t want to show your messy room while on a FaceTime video call? That will be possible starting with iOS 15 as Apple is adding a new Portrait mode feature to FaceTime which will blur your background and a depth effect to your video feed.
Do note that this feature will only be available on the iPhone X and newer devices.
8. FaceTime Links
iOS 15 lets you schedule FaceTime calls ahead of time. You can generate FaceTime links that you can share with your friends or family ahead of a scheduled FaceTime call. Then, one can join the meeting by simply tapping on the link when the meeting is about to start.
9. FaceTime Comes to Android and PC
Apple is bringing FaceTime to Android and PCs with iOS 15. You’ll be able to create and share FaceTime links with Android and Windows users, who can then join the call from Chrome or Edge browser. The experience will likely be clunky, but I guess something is better than nothing. Android and Windows users still won’t be able to initiate a FaceTime call, though.
Apple is making some solid improvements to FaceTime with iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS Monterey. If you had been using Zoom or Google Meet to hold your weekly group calls with your friends or family, you should be able to use FaceTime for it once iOS 15 is released to the public later this year.
There are plenty of other new features in iOS 15 that you should also check out. And if you cannot wait until the public release of iOS 15 in September, you can install the iOS 15 beta on your iPhone to take try out all the new features today itself.
