Phone, Facetime and Messages: Three pillars of communication

By Jennifer Kerr

With Apple products, there are ALWAYS several good ways to do just about everything. And Siri can always help you out. That includes making phone calls, doing FaceTime or texting.

Let’s start with our friend Settings. These three are all green and are conveniently located together in Settings. Note that phone calls, FaceTime and iMessages are all based mainly on your phone number, but also use email addresses. A few things you want to do here, mostly in Phone:

in Phone, go down to Silence Unknown Callers. If you turn this on, incoming calls from people in your Contacts, from recent outgoing alls and Siri suggestions will ring through to you. All other Unknown Callers will be silenced and sent to voicemail and will be listed in your Recent lists. I love this! Anyone real (and even a few scams) will leave a voicemail. The scammers usually do not. I’ll show you in a bit how to block these scam calls. You also can turn on Calls on Other Devices, so they ring through to your iPad of Mac.

In FaceTime, you can set this up to suit you. If you want to do FaceTime, turn it on here and this will allow people to contact you on FaceTime, which is basically texting with live video.Turn on Live Photos if you want to do that during calls.

In Messages, turn iMessage on. Turn on Text Message Forwarding if you want all messages to go to your iPad or Mac; list those devices there. Turn on send as SMS. I’ll explain that later.

On your iPad, in Settings, no Phone. In FaceTime, turn on FaceTime and the same things as you did on your phone. In Messages, turn it on. 

Phone

There are many, many ways to make a phone call:

*Open the Phone App. If the Keypad doesn’t come up, tap Keypad on the bottom. 

Enter your number in the keypad. If you make a mistake use the small x that pops up next to the green telephone.  Tap the green phone to call.

*Paste in a number you’ve copied from elsewhere. Tap the phone number field on top and tap Paste. Tap green phone to send.

*if you have Favorites, choose one to call.

*Tap recents and choose one to call.

*Call someone in your Contacts from the Contacts app. 

Use Siri:

Say call or dial followed by the number. 

Say something like redial the last number or return my last all.

Have her call someone on your Contact’s list. You might have to specify if it’s a mobile, iPhone or home.

Answer or Decline incoming calls:

To answer tap the green button that will come up at the top if you are working on your phone or on the full screen if your phone is locked. To silence a call, press the side button or either volume button to press the red Decline button. It will go to voicemail.

On a phone call, you can switch the audio to the speaker or a bluetooth device. Press on the Audio on the top right and see the options. 

If you need to use another app while on a call, go to home screen and open app. to get back to the call, tap the green call button in the top left of the screen.

Voicemail. You should have created a voicemail password and recorded your message when you started using voicemail. You can ask Siri if you have any new voicemails and ask her to play them. You can either read or listen to your voicemails.

To block voice calls and also FaceTime calls and messages:

When you get a call or voicemail from someone you don’t know or want, tap the i with the circle next to the number or contact. Scroll down and tap Block this Caller. You can fine your blocked contacts in Settings>Phone>Blocked Contacts and can restore them if you want.

FaceTime

FaceTime is basically a phone call or text with video. Like phone and text, you can make the calls either with an internet connection or a cellular data connection. You can FaceTime on a phone, iPad or Mac. You can also screen-mirror FT on AppleTV.

Several ways to make a FT call:

Tell Siri, Make a FaceTime call, or Call (name of your friend or relative) on FaceTime.

Or, in the app, tap the plus at the top right, type the name or number you want to call.

Or go to Contacts and open a contact and tap the FaceTime icon in the top center.

Or start a call from a Messages conversation. Tap the profile picture or the name at the top of the conversation and then tap FaceTime.

You can call multiple people for one call, up to 32. Tap that plus at the top right and type in the names or numbers of the people. Then tap the video or audio symbol to make the call. 

To take a live photo in FaceTime on iPhone, Tap the photo circle. You can do effects during calls, such as your Memoji, filters to change your appearance, add stickers and labels.

In iOS15, you can now FT with people on non-Apple devices. 

Messages

You can text not only words, but also photos, videos, music and more. And you can have a lot of fun—and impress your grandchildren! Practice with a friend or relative. You can also send messages to yourself to practice.

There are two kinds of texting: iMessages are with another iPhone or iPad or Mac; you will see a blue message bubble. If you are texting with someone on another kind of phone, those are SMS and you will see a green bubble. If texting to a group and one person is non-Apple, it will be green. Blue texts are free and everything you send or receive is encrypted; green ones use your texting minutes (but most plans are unlimited these days) and are NOT encrypted. 

To send a message, open Messages and tap on the blue square with the “pen” in the upper right. Enter a phone number or name. 

Or tell Siri to text or message one of your contacts.

Or click on the blue circle with a plus and it will go to Contacts. Once you have one person, you can add more to this message with the blue plus sign. Once you have one person or a group, you can type or dictate a message in the box below and hit the blue or green arrow to send it.  If you get an Exclamation Mark, the message can’t be sent right now (no service) but it will go when you get service.

To see when the message was sent and received, pull the message bubble to the left.

To reply to a message, use Siri to dictate, or tap into the box and type a reply. When you start typing, a keyboard will pop up. You will also see a symbol for emojis that you can add to a message.

For a Quick Tapback to respond to a message, either double-tap or hold a message and get your choice of gray emojis above the message. Tap one and it goes. 

You can send an audio message. Tap on the gray circle in the message place. If you start typing instead, that gray box will turn into the blue send arrow.

SPECIAL EFFECTS in iMessage. Practice these!!!

Quick and Easy: If you type one of these three common messages in the box, it will be sent with special effects: Happy Birthday (balloons), Congratulations (confetti) and Happy New Year (fireworks).

-Send with Effect: To see these, you must first write your message (or even part of it). Then the mic in the message bubble will turn into a blue arrow. Press firmly on this. NOTE: a quick tap will just send the message; you want to hold it down until you get the screen that says Send with effect.

1. The Bubble screen gives you four choices to change how your message is received: Slam, Loud, Gentle and Invisible Ink. Try these out!

2. The Screen screen gives you eight choices of special effects to go with your message (most have sound effects, too): Echo, Spotlight, Balloons, Confetti, Inflating Heart, Lasers, Fireworks, Shooting Star and Celebration. Try all of these. They are fun and recipients love them!

-Photos. To the left of the iMessage space, slide over to the Camera. You can take a new picture or access one in your Photos (tap on the overlapping photos in top left). You can mark up your photo by tapping on it until it goes full screen. Tap Markup in the bottom left and you can write or draw on the photo, then send it.

 #images gives you tons of funny GIFs (tiny movies). You can search to get ones on specific topics (birthday, etc.) or featuring someone or something (Star Trek, Spongebob, snakes, cats, etc.).

Texting is not just for communicating with family and friends. It can also make your Real Life easier. You can have the Post Office text you when a package is coming and when it has arrived and where it was put. The county election office will text you when your mail-in ballot has been received and counted. SMUD will let you know when there’s an outage and when it will end. You can get your hotel reservation confirmations. Your service folks can let you know when they will arrive or can text you a receipt. A restaurant can text you when your order is ready. Check out the various websites for the companies, etc. 

Of course, you can also get texts that are scams. So look carefully and don’t quickly click anything or reply. It’s always best if you get something at all questionable to instead call or go online separately and ask about what you’ve received.