6. Get Ready for Your Close-Up! It’s FaceTime!
Your iPad gives you a lot of ways to communicate with your friends and family, such as email, instant messaging, and texting. In this chapter, you learn all about another very cool way to stay in touch: FaceTime and other kinds of video conferencing.
• What is FaceTime?
• Skype: FaceTime for people without FaceTime
• Being Safe on FaceTime and Skype
FaceTime is one of the coolest features of the iPad. We’ve all seen science fiction movies in which people don’t just have phone calls with each other, but have video calls where they can see each other while they talk. That’s what FaceTime provides.
You can’t have a FaceTime video chat with just anyone, but when you can, it’s a pretty cool way to stay in touch.
Setting Up FaceTime
Your iPad came with FaceTime already installed, and setting it up is pretty easy. In fact, you don’t have to do anything to get an account! FaceTime uses the Apple ID you created when you set up your iPad in Chapter 2, “Getting Started: Set Up and Sync Your iPad.”
Because you logged in to your Apple ID when you set up your iPad, FaceTime already has that information. You just need to type in your password the first time you open FaceTime and tap Sign In. After you’ve done that, the only thing you need to do is add some people who can also use FaceTime to your address book. Then you’re ready to make some FaceTime calls! (Learn all about adding contacts to your address book in “Using Contacts” in Chapter 5, “Talk to Me: Texting, Chatting, and Email.”)
If people want to call you on FaceTime, just give them the email address you use for your Apple ID and they can call you whenever you’re online.
Making FaceTime Calls
To make a FaceTime call, you need to first make sure that your iPad is connected to a Wi-Fi or 3G/4G network and then tap the FaceTime app on the home screen to launch it. Next, follow these steps:
1. Find the person you want to call in your contacts list and tap their name.
2. Tap the phone number or email address that the person uses for FaceTime.
3. FaceTime tries to make the call. If the person is online and wants to talk, they accept your call and, in just a second, you’re having a video chat.
4. When you’re on a FaceTime call, three buttons appear across the bottom of the screen: Mute, Switch Cameras, and End Call. Tap the Mute icon if you want to mute the microphone on your iPad so the person you’re chatting with can’t hear you. Tap it again and they can hear you.
5. The iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch models that can run FaceTime all have two cameras. Normally, it’s the iPad’s front camera that takes your picture for FaceTime, but you might want to show the person you’re chatting with something else nearby. Switching to the iPad’s back camera might be the best way to do that. Tap the Switch Cameras button to switch the camera they’re looking through. Tap it again to switch back.
6. When you’re ready to hang up, tap the End Call icon.
Who You Can Call and Who You Can’t
FaceTime is so cool that you’re probably going to want to call everyone you know using it. I’m sorry to tell you, though, that you can’t call just anyone. You can only call other people who have FaceTime. To use FaceTime, you and the people you want to call need the following:
• An iPad 2 or newer
• An iPad mini
• An iPhone 4 or newer
• A fourth-generation iPod touch or newer
• A Mac with FaceTime installed
Unfortunately, your friends with other tablets, cell phones that aren’t iPhones, or Windows computers can’t use FaceTime.
Answering FaceTime Calls
When someone calls you using FaceTime, you hear whatever ringtone you’ve assigned to FaceTime (check out “Choosing Your Sounds” in Chapter 3, “It’s All Yours! Customizing Your iPad,” for more info) and two buttons appear on the screen: Accept and Decline.
To talk to the person who’s calling, tap Accept. If you don’t want to talk to them, tap Decline.
Hold All Your Calls with Do Not Disturb
Being available for FaceTime calls is great—when you want to talk to people. But if you don’t feel like talking, or if you need to concentrate on something (like homework) and don’t want to be distracted, then having a FaceTime call interrupt you isn’t so fun. Luckily, a feature called Do Not Disturb can help.
Do Not Disturb lets you control when you don’t want to be available by FaceTime or bothered by any alert sounds from your iPad.
Enabling Do Not Disturb
Turning on Do Not Disturb when you want some peace and quiet is simple. Just go to your iPad’s home screen and follow these steps:
1. Tap Settings.
2. Slide Do Not Disturb to On. As long as that slider is On, you won’t get FaceTime calls and alerts won’t make noise. Just make sure you remember to turn it Off when you’re ready to talk again.
Scheduling Do Not Disturb
Using Do Not Disturb for those times when you want silence is great, but there are probably some times when you don’t want to be bothered by your iPad at all, like when you’re sleeping or in school. In that case, you can use Do Not Disturb’s scheduling feature to automatically turn the feature on and off. To do that:
1. Tap Settings on the home screen.
2. Tap Notifications.
3. Tap Do Not Disturb.
4. Move the Scheduled slider to On.
5. To set the time when Do Not Disturb will be on, tap the From/To box and use the wheels to choose the hours you want.
6. You can make exceptions to Do Not Disturb. For instance, you can always allow calls from certain groups of contacts from your Contacts app, such as family members. To do that, tap Allow Calls From and select a group of contacts (to learn about Contacts groups, check out “Making Contacts Groups,” in Chapter 5).
7. If someone really needs to talk to you, like in an emergency, they’ll probably call right back if they don’t get you the first time. Do Not Disturb is smart enough to know this. Keep the Repeated Calls slider On to allow calls through if the same person calls twice in three minutes.
Do Not Disturb puts these settings into effect every day at the time you selected until you move the Scheduled slider to Off.
Skype: FaceTime for People without FaceTime
Just because some of your friends don’t have FaceTime doesn’t mean that you can’t video chat with them. You both just need to get an app called Skype. Skype lets you make phone and video calls over the Internet from your iPad, iPhone, Mac, PC, or phone or tablet running Android. (This section focuses on video calls, but phone calls work basically the same way.)
You can download Skype for free from the App Store, but you do need to register for a Skype account (get help from your parents to do this) and be online at the same time.
Adding Friends in Skype
In order to video chat with your friends using Skype, you all need Skype accounts. When you have them, you need to add your friends to your Skype contacts. Begin by tapping the Skype app to open it and then follow these steps:
1. Tap the + button to add a new contact.
2. Tap Search Skype Directory to look for your friends’ Skype usernames.
3. Tap in your friends’ names or their Skype usernames and then tap Search.
4. Find your friend in the search results and tap their name.
5. If it’s your friend, tap Add Contact and they’ll be saved to your contacts. Repeat these steps until you’ve added all your friends and family members with Skype accounts to your contacts. Then you’ll be ready to chat!
Making Video Calls Using Skype
After you’ve added some friends and family to Skype, you can start video chatting! To do this, you need to make sure you’re connected to the Internet—Wi-Fi is best since it’s unlimited, but you can use 3G/4G too. (Remember that both 3G and 4G usually have a limit on how much you can use, so make sure to get parents’ permission before you use them for Skype.) To get started, tap the Skype app to open it.
1. You’ll see your friends and family on the All Contacts screen. The contacts with phone icons on them can’t have video chats. Look for the contacts with the green check mark at the bottom. That check mark means that person is online and available for a video chat. Tap the person you want to chat with.
2. In the contact window that pops up, tap Video to start the call. The person you’re calling has to accept your call (the same is true for you; if someone tries to call you on Skype, you can either accept or decline the call). When they do, a picture of them appears on your iPad’s screen.
3. When you’re on a Skype call, a number of icons appear across the bottom of the screen. When you tap the box with the arrow in it, the video chat window shrinks and reveals Skype’s sidebar. From there, you can access your contacts or account.
4. The Chat icon lets you type messages to the person you’re chatting with while your video conversation is still happening. You might use this to say something to the person you’re talking to without people nearby you overhearing.
5. Tap the Camera icon to choose which of the iPad’s cameras is shooting the video for the chat. You can choose either the front-facing camera above the screen, the one on the back, or no camera at all in case you want to chat but don’t want the other person to see you.
6. The Microphone icon mutes your video chat so that, even if you’re speaking, the other person won’t be able to hear you. Mute is turned on when there’s a red line through the Microphone icon and off when the line is gone.
7. Tap the Volume icon to adjust the call volume.
8. Tap the Hang Up icon to end your calls and video chats.
Be Safe: On FaceTime and Skype
When it comes to being safe on FaceTime or Skype, there’s one very simple rule to follow: Don’t chat with people you don’t know.
Because you can see the name of the caller before you accept their call, if you don’t know the person, you can decline the call. If you follow this rule, it’s hard to get into unpleasant situations on FaceTime or Skype. Here are some other good rules to follow:
• Don’t give your FaceTime or Skype username to strangers or people who you don’t know offline.
• If someone calls from a number you know, but you don’t recognize their picture when it appears, hang up.
• If something happens on FaceTime or Skype that makes you upset, uncomfortable, or worried, tell a parent, teacher, or another person you trust.