How To Add People to a Facetime Call or Video Chat

For the past week, most of the world has been on lockdown during the Coronavirus pandemic. Out of boredom and need for social gathering, my friends and I started a virtual bar session we call the “VR Bar” – we basically just open a FaceTime Video Call and add a bunch of people to it.

We did max out the FaceTime connections the other night… it was my 40th birthday and my friends were all supposed to be at my house for a party. Instead, we all hung out in a virtual bar. The max number of concurrent connections in FaceTime is 32 and we hit the limit.

We also found out quickly that the app kind of bugs out after 10-15 people join. When many people are in a FaceTime call, the app tries to focus on the user the most active sound is coming from. But when 8 people are trying to talk at the same time, the app can’t quite keep up. I’m sure the group and the consumption didn’t quite help either 😉

Since then, I’ve gotten a bunch of people asking,

“How do I add people to a FaceTime Call?”

It’s actually pretty easy to add people to a FaceTime Video Call. It’s just sort of hidden and not super intuitive…

To add people to a FaceTime Video Call from your iPhone:

1. Call someone using FaceTime
2. When the Video Chat is initiated, tap your screen to show the bar at the bottom with the red button to end the call
3. Swipe the bar up slowly to expose other options in the menu
4. Click “add Person” and search for the contact you’d like to add to the FaceTime call
5. Click the contact you’d like to add to the call

When you search for contacts, they’ll either show up Blue or Grey:

• Contacts in Blue are available for FaceTime chat (basically, they’re using an iPhone and online)
• Contacts in Grey are not available for FaceTime chat (either not using an iPhone or not online)

Start a FaceTime chat room from a text thread

Another cool way to start a group FaceTime chat is through a text thread.

A bunch of my close friends have a “COVID-19” group text thread where we share information, funny memes, and personal experience. From the text thread, we can start a FaceTime video chat with everyone on the thread and anyone available can join.

To Start a FaceTime Video Call from a Text Thread:

• Add people to a text thread
• Tap beneath the contact profile images and thread name in the top to expand options
• Tap the FaceTime button

This will leave a FaceTime video call link in the text thread and show anyone subscribed to the thread how many people are actively on the video call.

This option has been rad during the coronavirus lockdown because our VR Bar group continues to grow. Our friends can plan for the video hang out session in the text thread and then activate easily without adding new people manually as shown above.

Hopeful This Helps People Connect More