Apple’s FaceTime video calling is perhaps one of their most used features. It lets people with iPhones, iPads, and Macs make easy video calls to one another. You can’t make FaceTime calls from Android, but there are several other ways to make video calls—even to iPhone and Mac users.
No, there is no FaceTime on Android, and there’s not likely to be anytime soon. FaceTime is a proprietary standard, and just isn’t available outside the Apple ecosystem. So, if you were hoping to use FaceTime to call your mom’s iPhone from your Android phone, you’re out of luck. However, there are several great video calling alternatives that do work on Android.
A word of advice. If you happen to search the Google Play Store for FaceTime and find apps with “FaceTime” in their names, you should know that they are not official apps, and do not support Apple FaceTime. At best, you might be able to make video calls with them, but at worst you’ll find yourself installing some sketchy app, or even malware.
Instead of trying your luck with those apps, there are some solid video calling apps available for Android. No, they don’t let you hook up with Facetime users. But, you can use them to make video calls to people using iPhones, Android phones, and even other platforms. They just have to have the same app installed on their device.
- Skype: Owned by Microsoft, Skype was one of the first video call apps to become mainstream. Since then, it’s only gotten better. Skype is available for Windows, macOS, iOS, Linux, and Android.
- Google Hangouts: Google Hangouts not only lets you make video calls, you can have a full-on video conference with multiple people. There are dedicated Hangout apps for iOS and Android, and it’s available to all desktop users via their web browser.
- Google Duo: Google Duo is only available for Android and iOS. It only supports one-to-one video calls, but you can make them over Wi-Fi or cellular data connections. Google Duo also offers a couple of neat features. Knock Knock lets you see the video of the person who’s calling you, even before you answer the call. You can also leave a video message (much like a voicemail) when someone can’t answer your call.
- Facebook Messenger: Did you know that you can make video calls using Facebook Messenger? You can, and you can use the feature on pretty much any operating system. There are dedicated Messenger apps for iOS and Android, but you can also use Messenger right in your desktop web browser to make video calls from Windows, macOS, or Linux.
- Viber: Viber is a feature-rich app that you can use for video calls and a variety of other purposes. It has millions of users worldwide and is available for a variety of platforms like iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux.
And yes, you’ll need to take the extra step of making sure that the people you want to call have the right app installed. But once that’s done, you’ll be able to place video calls to just about anybody, no matter what platform they use.
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