How to video call your family

Seeing their faces is worth the ten minutes it takes to set this up once, and after that it is one tap. A phone call is lovely, but watching your grandchild show you their new tooth, or seeing your daughter's kitchen while she cooks and chats, is a different thing entirely. Most people put video calling in the too-hard basket because the first go feels fiddly. It is not hard. It is just unfamiliar, and unfamiliar wears off fast. Set it up right the once, and from then on you tap a face and you are talking.

Below is exactly how to do it: how to pick the right app, how to set it up so it is easy every time, and the handful of little problems that trip everyone up, with the easy fix for each.

1. First, pick the app the family already uses

Here is the real trick, and almost nobody tells you this: don't pick the app yourself. Ring your family and ask them which one they use. Video calling only works when both ends are on the same app, so the app that matters is the one your grandchildren already have open on their phones. Chasing the "best" app is a waste of time. The best app is the one your family is already on.

Once you know, here is the plain rundown of the common ones and when each fits, so it makes sense when they tell you:

• FaceTime is for Apple to Apple. If you have an iPhone or iPad and so do they, FaceTime is built right in, nothing to download, and the picture is lovely. If anyone in the family has an Android phone, though, FaceTime won't reach them, so it is only the answer when everyone is on Apple.
• WhatsApp is the one when the family is a mix of phones. It works the same on iPhones and Android phones, so if some of the grandkids are on Apple and some on Samsung, WhatsApp gets everybody in the same place. You download it once and it is free.
• Messenger is the pick if the family more or less lives on Facebook. If you already scroll through Facebook for photos, Messenger is the video call button that comes with it, so there is nothing new to learn and the people you want are already there.
• Zoom is for a group, like the whole family on the screen at once at Christmas or a birthday. Where the others are best one-to-one, Zoom is built to put a crowd of little squares on your screen so everyone can be in the one call together.

Pick one, and only one, and stick with it. You do not need all four. Trying to juggle several is exactly how people tie themselves in knots. One app, learned properly, beats four half-understood.

2. Set it up once so it is easy every time

This is the step that makes the difference between "I can never remember how" and "I just tap her face". Spend ten quiet minutes on it once, with a cup of tea, and you never think about it again.

1. Get the app on your phone. FaceTime is already there on an iPhone. For WhatsApp, Messenger or Zoom, open the App Store (or the Play Store on an Android), search the name, and tap Get or Install. If a family member is with you, let them do this bit while you watch, so you see where it lives.
2. Save the people you call as favourites or contacts. This is the important one. Add your daughter, your son, each set of grandchildren as a saved contact with their name and photo. Then you never hunt through menus: you open the app, see their face, tap it. If you can add them to a Favourites list, even better, because they sit right at the top every time.
3. Learn where the big buttons are. Every one of these apps shows the same handful of large, clear buttons during a call: a red button to hang up, a microphone to mute and unmute, and a little camera icon to swap which way the camera points. That is all you need. Have your family member start a practice call across the room so you can see the buttons live, once, with no pressure.

Do the practice call. It feels a bit silly ringing someone in the next room, but that one relaxed run-through is what turns the whole thing from daunting into ordinary. Big clear buttons, a saved face to tap, one practice go. That is the setup done.

3. The little problems, and the easy fixes

Nearly everyone hits one of these the first few times, and every one of them has a fix that takes two seconds. Knowing them in advance means you never panic mid-call.

• "They can only see the ceiling" or the camera points the wrong way. The phone has two cameras, one on the front for your face and one on the back for photos, and the call sometimes starts on the wrong one. Find the little icon of a camera with two arrows curving around it, usually in a corner of the screen, and tap it. It flips the view to your face. If you look dark on screen, turn so a window or a lamp is in front of you, not behind you.
• "They can't hear me." You are on mute. Look for the small microphone icon on the screen. If it has a line struck through it, tap it once and your voice comes back. While you are at it, press the volume buttons on the side of the phone upward so you can hear them clearly too.
• "The picture keeps freezing or going blocky." This is a weak WiFi signal, almost every time. Move closer to your WiFi box, the router, the little box with the blinking lights, and it usually smooths out within seconds. Sitting in the far back room away from the router is the number one cause of a stuttery call.
• "It won't connect at all." Check the other person is actually on the same app, and that your WiFi is on. Nine times in ten it is one of those two. If in doubt, hang up and tap their face again to start fresh. A second go fixes an awful lot.

4. Getting the whole gang on at once

A group call with all the grandkids at once is the best fun of the lot, and barely any harder than a one-to-one. In WhatsApp or Messenger you start a call with one person and tap Add to bring others in. For a proper crowd, a birthday or a Christmas catch-up, Zoom is the one built for it. Do not worry about who "hosts" it. Let one of the younger ones set it up and send you a link, and all you do is tap the link at the right time, and you are in, with everybody's face in their own little square.

One gentle tip: group calls get noisy when everyone talks at once. If it gets hard to follow, that is normal, not something you have done wrong. A quick "one at a time, let Grandma hear you" sorts it out, and half the joy is the happy chaos anyway.

5. A quick word on WiFi versus mobile data

This is the one bit worth understanding so a long, lovely call never comes with a nasty surprise. Your phone gets online in two ways: your home WiFi, and your phone plan's mobile data when you are out and about. Here is what matters: video calls made on your home WiFi are free and use nothing off your phone plan, so you can talk for an hour and it costs you not a cent extra. Video calls made on mobile data, when you are away from home, do use up your plan's data, and video uses a fair chunk of it.

So the simple rule is this: for a long chat, be at home on the WiFi, which is nearly always where you'll be anyway. Out at the shops or the park, a quick video hello is fine, but save the long catch-ups for the couch at home. Do that and you never have to give the cost a second thought.

You do not have to work it out alone

None of this is beyond you. It is a few taps that feel strange once and then never again, and the reward, a face instead of just a voice, is enormous. If setting it up on your own feels like a hurdle, that is exactly what we help with: we get the right app on your phone, save your family as one-tap favourites, do a practice call, and make sure the sound and the buttons all make sense before we leave. It is the same patient, no-rush approach we bring to setting up an iPhone for an older parent, whether that is for you or someone you are helping.

Let us get you set up

If you would like a hand to get video calling working and feeling easy, we will sit with you and set it up properly: the right app, your family saved as favourites, a practice call, and a friendly walk-through so you come away confident, not talked down to. Get in touch and we will make seeing their faces the easiest thing on your phone, in person where we cover and over the phone right across Australia.