Take your FaceTime calls to the next level with portrait mode

Although it has always been popular, FaceTime has played a bigger role in our lives since corona than ever before. Video calling is nowadays the standard in many cases, time to take your conversations to the next level.

As with Microsoft Teams and Zoom, FaceTime also allows you to blur your background during a call. How exactly do you do that? We explain that to you in this article.

Handy functionality for FaceTime

Since we increasingly use FaceTime for business, it is quite nice to be able to blur the background. Of course, it works best to sit in a calming place before important conversations, but sometimes you can’t escape it. In that respect it is nice that you can make the background a little less recognizable.

Blurring the background is not available on your Mac at this time. Consumers with an iPhone or iPad can manage it. The oldest iPhone to support the functionality is the iPhone XS, and the oldest iPad is the third-generation Air. As soon as the iPhone 14 sees the light of day this year, FaceTime will logically also offer support.

Blur your background on iPhone and iPad

If you want to blur the background during a FaceTime call, follow these steps:

• Open the FaceTimeapp on your iPhone or iPad
• Set up a conversation with one of your contacts
• Press the minimized screen with your own image
• As soon as it is made larger, press on the top left on the frame with a doll in it

This is the button that activates portrait mode in FaceTime. You will immediately see that the background of your video is blurred. However, it is also possible to activate the function via the control panel during a call. You do that as follows:

• Bring up Control Center during a FaceTime call
• Press the option at the top left Effects
• Select the option Portrait

As soon as the corresponding icon turns blue, the functionality is activated. If you no longer want to keep the background blurry, press the icon again.