If you’ve ever wished you could check up on your house while you’re away, wish no more because we have a simple solution. We are going to configure a Mac as a home security camera that will open a live video stream on demand which can be watched remotely from anywhere via an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or another Mac. If this sounds potentially complicated, it’s actually not at all, and everything is achieved through a little FaceTime hackery. Read along.

Requirements for the Mac Security Cam
Here’s what you’ll need before getting started:

• FaceTime app installed on the home Mac (comes with Lion or later, earlier Macs can get it from Mac App Store)
• A valid Apple ID to use as a FaceTime Login – you may want to create an additional unique Apple ID for this purpose
• An iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, or another Mac with FaceTime

Setting Up the Camera & Accepting Remote Video Connections

This is easier to set up than you might think. We’re going to assume you already have FaceTime on the Mac installed, if not do that first. Next you’ll want to position the Mac so that the front-facing iSight (FaceTime) camera is pointing in the direction you want to watch. With that done, here’s the most technical aspect of this set up:

1. Launch Terminal found in /Applications/Utilities/ and enter the following command to automatically accept incoming FaceTime calls:

defaults write com.apple.FaceTime AutoAcceptInvites -bool YES

2. Still in Terminal, enter the next command, changing the email address on the end with the Apple ID you wish to automatically accept a video connection from:

defaults write com.apple.FaceTime AutoAcceptInvitesFrom -array-add change@me.com

If you want to add other Apple ID’s or even a phone number to automatically accept FaceTime video calls from, feel free to do so by running the above command again with additional email addresses. Phone numbers must be prefixed with a + like so: +14085551212

Opening the Live Video Feed

Now for the fun part. Grab an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac that is setup to use FaceTime with the Apple ID you chose to autoaccept invites from, and initiate a FaceTime call with the home Mac’s Apple ID. It will automatically accept the call, giving you a live video feed of what’s going on at the location of the recipient Mac. Hang up the FaceTime call at any time to close the video feed.

As mentioned earlier, it may be best to create a unique Apple ID specifically for the recipient Mac. That Apple ID could then be added as a contact to the iOS Address Book as “Mac Home Camera” and added to favorites for quick access.

The only downside to FaceTime is the feed requires a wi-fi connection or to use Personal Hotspot to circumvent the FaceTime wi-fi limitation. You could probably use Skype to get around that limitation as well, but that’d be another article. Enjoy!

If you’ve ever had to explain to someone that iPhone visual voicemail does not literally mean video voicemail, you know the potential disappointment that comes with it. What the user probably envisioned was the ability to record a quick video message and leave that as a video voicemail for the recipient to watch when they receive it. But it turns out that the iPhone can send video messages, they just aren’t going to be labeled as voicemail or sent through FaceTime, and in some ways this makes them even more flexible.

Sending Video Messages from iOS

Here’s how to record and send a video message from the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:

• Launch the Camera app
• Tap the camera switch button to toggle the front-facing camera
• Slide the camera mode from picture to video in the lower right corner
• Press the red button at the bottom to start recording a video message, keep it around 30 seconds or less, and hit the stop when finished
• Tap the thumbnail in the lower left corner to bring up the camera/video roll with the most recently recorded video
• Tap on the square arrow icon and select either “Email Video” or “Message”



• Fill out the email or message as usual, specify a recipient, and tap send

From the receiving users perspective, using “Message” will act closer to what a video voicemail may be like, with the recipient getting a notification alert informing them a video has arrived. These come in like a standard MMS, though there’s a small video icon in the lower corner to demonstrate that it’s a movie, and when tapped it plays the video. This is best with iMessage, so be sure iMessage is set up and configured for all users to get the best results.

You can use email as well, though the video message will just be lost in their standard emails and it won’t arrive as a thumbnailed alert as the messages protocol does.

Is this video voicemail? Not quite, but it’s pretty close. Hopefully a future version of FaceTime will allow for video answering machines and voicemail boxes, but until then, using iMessage gets the job done and should satisfy most users.

FaceTime has long been expected to support video calls over 3G networks, but thus far it hasn’t happened without a jailbreak. Blame it on the carriers, Apple, the rain, maybe 3G is too slow, or maybe it will be a feature for upcoming 4G LTE iPad and iPhone hardware… who knows, but regardless you can use a little loophole to initiate FaceTime video chat over 3G connections without the need for jailbreaking.

• Enable Personal Hotspot on an iPhone
• Connect to that Wi-Fi hotspot with another FaceTime capable iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad

Suddenly you can make video calls over 3G.

Not the best solution because it requires additional hardware, but apparently it works.

Thanks to Av for the tip

If you’re video chatting at night or in an area with limited lighting, you can brighten your face by opening up a blank white web browser window. This is obviously a really simple tip, but it’s kind of fun to see how surprisingly useful blank browser windows can be (like speeding up Safari on the iPhone 3G).

The simplest way to create a blank browser window is to open up about:blank which works in every modern browser.

The idea is probably taken from Photo Booth, which uses an all white screen as a virtual flash of sorts to brighten your mug when you take a picture (you can disable that by holding down the Shift key). I’m guessing it won’t be long until some developers start creating wrappers for FaceTime, iChat, and Skype to have this in some form of native app.

Not a bad tip via Lifehacker

You can start a FaceTime call from any web browser in Mac OS X or iOS with a custom URL. You can use the following with a standard href anchor tag:

• facetime://appleid
• facetime://email@address
• facetime://phonenumber

Once a user clicks on the properly formed FaceTime URL, FaceTime.app will launch in Mac OS X or iOS and a video call will be initiated. In both cases, you’re required to have a FaceTime compatible camera and the FaceTime app installed. If you don’t have it on the Mac, you can buy FaceTime for Mac for $1 from the Mac App Store (App Store link).

A link will work like this: FaceTime: OSXDaily. FYI, this URL opens a FaceTime call to our group email, feel free to try it out although I can’t guarantee anyone will answer. Maybe you’ll see this stuffed animal though:
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Somewhat lost in the hubbub of the MacBook Pro 2011 refresh and Mac OS X Lion 10.7 Developer Preview was the launch of FaceTime HD, which is now finalized and available for all Mac users to download from the Mac App Store. The new version supports 720p video calls, but in order to make 720p calls you’d need a Mac with an HD camera (like the new MacBook Pro’s), otherwise you’ll maintain the current VGA quality video.

FaceTime costs $1 now? I thought it was free? What gives?
While the beta release of FaceTime was free, the final release of FaceTime costs $0.99. Apparently charging for FaceTime is due to an accounting requirement (MacGasm explains this if you’re interested), but I think it also serves the purpose of getting Mac users familiar with downloading apps from the Mac App Store. I say this because I think the upgrade to Mac OS X 10.7 Lion will be available as a paid download through the Mac App Store, but this could just be wishful thinking on my part too.

Get it now from the Mac App Store for $0.99 (direct link)

You can set FaceTime to automatically accept incoming FaceTime calls from approved phone numbers or email addresses. You’ll need to have FaceTime for Mac installed, and then use the Terminal and the defaults command:

Auto-accept FaceTime calls from a specified email:

defaults write com.apple.FaceTime AutoAcceptInvitesFrom -array-add email@address.com

Auto-accept FaceTime calls from a specified phone number:

defaults write com.apple.FaceTime AutoAcceptInvitesFrom -array-add +14085551212

Make sure the string is all contained in one command on one line.

You can add as many pre-screened email addresses and phone numbers that you’d like (Obviously this only works in Mac OS X).

This is a neat trick that I was trying to figure out how to do on my own when I stumbled on a post from a computer repair company amusingly named CornDog Computers. Apparently they were writing an application that would automatically answer calls when they discovered you can do it manually through the defaults command.

As we anticipated, FaceTime for Mac is now available… as a beta. FaceTime for Mac allows you to make FaceTime calls to iPhone 4 and iPod touch users directly from your Mac. What’s interesting is that Mac FaceTime client is it’s own independent application, it was not built into iChat, although I bet this will change come the release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion next summer.

You can see the FaceTime for Mac client running in the above picture from Apple, and yes that’s the new MacBook Air featured in the picture.

Download FaceTime for Mac

You can download the Facetime beta for Mac OS X directly from Apple.com.

A reader sent in this hilarious picture which pokes fun at FaceTime, the video chat feature included with the iPhone and iPod touch (and likely soon the iPad).

In case you don’t get it, the FaceTime camera on the iPhone and iPod touch is located on the front near where your ear rests, so if you just initiated a FaceTime call holding the phone up to your head as usual the recipient would get a lovely view of your ear canal. This might be more fitting on the iPhone 4 joke page but hey, FaceTime expands beyond the iPhone now.

Not sure of the origin of this image, but it’s pretty funny! Thanks for sending this in Kevin.

Apple may be readying the release of a new iPad in time for the holiday shopping season, according to a report. The refreshed iPad is expected to be equipped with a FaceTime compatible camera and the new iPad iOS 4.2. The report from AppleInsider also suggests that Apple is looking to get FaceTime compatibility on all Apple mobile products before opening the standard to the rest of the world.

Assuming the report holds true, the new iPad may be released at the same time that iOS 4 will come to the iPad as iOS 4.2 in November. The new OS will bring long awaited features such as multitasking and folder support to the device.

FaceTime is expected to come to Mac OS X’s very own iChat in the near future as well, and possibly even to Windows through another chat client. Other rumors surrounding a refreshed iPad suggest the device may sport dual-cameras, additional RAM, larger storage options, and even a higher resolution retina display.