Took First Handoff Call on Mac

[jmxp69]

Gotta be honest, I didn't think too much of the idea of taking a call on my Mac when the feature first became public. Just a few minutes ago, the wife called while I was browsing the forum. The Mac 'rang' along with the phone. My first inclination was to grab the phone, but I hit accept on the incoming call notification and it worked great.

Sound quality was fine, no echo, no negative comments from her (didn't even tell her I was using the Mac) and she didn't ask. It was actually pretty convenient being able to continue doing what I was doing without having to mess with the phone, hold it between ear and shoulder, fuss with speaker etc.

Overall it's not a life altering moment, but it was convenient and worked fine. I was pleasantly surprised.

 

[heisenberg123]

Gotta be honest, I didn't think too much of the idea of taking a call on my Mac when the feature first became public. Just a few minutes ago, the wife called while I was browsing the forum. The Mac 'rang' along with the phone. My first inclination was to grab the phone, but I hit accept on the incoming call notification and it worked great.

Sound quality was fine, no echo, no negative comments from her (didn't even tell her I was using the Mac) and she didn't ask. It was actually pretty convenient being able to continue doing what I was doing without having to mess with the phone, hold it between ear and shoulder, fuss with speaker etc.

Overall it's not a life altering moment, but it was convenient and worked fine. I was pleasantly surprised.

cool to hear, my MBP has rung a few times since updating to the new OSX and I have yet to try it, I will now the next time

 

[sviato]

Good to hear that it works well.

Do you know if there's a way to silence the call on the Mac without declining it? On the iPhone I've hit the power button to silence it without declining the call, wondering if there's some similar feature for the Mac.

 

[tekchic]

Do you have to have Bluetooth on with both the phone and the Mac for Handoff? I tried testing it yesterday after upgrading to Yosemite, but never saw the call go to the Mac.

I did see it show up on both the iPhone and iPad.

 

[neteng101]

Do you have to have Bluetooth on with both the phone and the Mac for Handoff?

You need iOS 8.1 and an active Bluetooth pairing I think... just tried making a call from my Mac.

 

[tekchic]

You need iOS 8.1 and an active Bluetooth pairing I think... just tried making a call from my Mac.

Ugh thanks. Yeah, I have iOS 8.02 on both devices and see calls on both iPad and iPhone when a call comes in -- I don't want to have bluetooth on all the time for just Handoff calls though, so that must be what I'm doing wrong. I'll pass.

 

[heisenberg123]

Ugh thanks. Yeah, I have iOS 8.02 on both devices and see calls on both iPad and iPhone when a call comes in -- I don't want to have bluetooth on all the time for just Handoff calls though, so that must be what I'm doing wrong. I'll pass.

my MBP rings when I get a call without a bluetooth pairing or 8.1

 

[jmxp69]

Do you have to have Bluetooth on with both the phone and the Mac for Handoff? I tried testing it yesterday after upgrading to Yosemite, but never saw the call go to the Mac.

I did see it show up on both the iPhone and iPad.

I believe you do. I think they're using the same communications protocols as Airdrop. After I was able to Airdrop back and forth between the Mac and phone, all of the handoff features worked. I read one thread that said pairing wasn't required, but it all worked after I paired, so…maybe it's not required, but it doesn't hurt.

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Good to hear that it works well.

Do you know if there's a way to silence the call on the Mac without declining it? On the iPhone I've hit the power button to silence it without declining the call, wondering if there's some similar feature for the Mac.

I don't know. Maybe the mute button--but that could interrupt other things happening on the Mac. I'll test a little later and see what options are available. If memory serves, I only saw Accept/Decline.

 

[en0x]

you don't need to have bt on for phone calls.

Phone and mac has to be on the same wifi and signed to the same apple id


and in FaceTime preferences on mac you should make the option to allow calls from phone

 

[Dizle]

I did a hand off call a couple of weeks ago on my Mac but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to send it back to my phone when I needed to leave the house haha. Maybe because it was in beta

 

[heisenberg123]

you don't need to have bt on for phone calls.

Phone and mac has to be on the same wifi and signed to the same apple id


and in FaceTime preferences on mac you should make the option to allow calls from phone

thanks for confirming I thought it had something to do with Facetime, because the incoming call icon in my dock looked like Facetime

 

[jmxp69]

Ugh thanks. Yeah, I have iOS 8.02 on both devices and see calls on both iPad and iPhone when a call comes in -- I don't want to have bluetooth on all the time for just Handoff calls though, so that must be what I'm doing wrong. I'll pass.

I'm curious why you don't want to leave BT on. Can't be battery?? Just pulled this off phone this AM. Idle all night, didn't even drop 1%.

 

[neteng101]

my MBP rings when I get a call without a bluetooth pairing or 8.1

Its apparently a wifi handoff, not bluetooth. I tried alternating between the two, and only got handoff with wifi on, no bluetooth, but not the other way around.

 

[needsmoar]

I did a hand off call a couple of weeks ago on my Mac but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to send it back to my phone when I needed to leave the house haha. Maybe because it was in beta

When in a call elsewhere, there is a green bar on top of phone to tap just like when you are multitasked out of a call to return

 

[jmxp69]

Its apparently a wifi handoff, not bluetooth. I tried alternating between the two, and only got handoff with wifi on, no bluetooth, but not the other way around.

Cool, thanks for sharing. I'll try this later too. None of the other handoff stuff (mail, safari, etc) worked without it, so I incorrectly figured calls worked the same. I'll check later and report back.

 

[tekchic]

I'm curious why you don't want to leave BT on. Can't be battery?? Just pulled this off phone this AM. Idle all night, didn't even drop 1%.

REALLY?! Guess I'm pretty old-school. I always kept BT off since I didn't have devices that paired with it. On my iPad Air, I only turn on BT when I'm pairing my Pencil by 53 or Wacom Intuos Creative Stylus (or doing AirDrop).

My 6 Plus gets ridiculously great battery life... maybe I'll try leaving BT on now then.

 

[CoilTap]

REALLY?! Guess I'm pretty old-school. I always kept BT off since I didn't have devices that paired with it. On my iPad Air, I only turn on BT when I'm pairing my Pencil by 53 or Wacom Intuos Creative Stylus (or doing AirDrop).

My 6 Plus gets ridiculously great battery life... maybe I'll try leaving BT on now then.

I leave BT on with my 6 Plus all the time. It doesn't make any noticeable difference on battery life.

 

[jmxp69]

I read lots of threads about bad battery life and while I would stipulate occasionally there's probably a bad piece of hardware here or there, it's clearly not the OS or the hardware (when it's working correctly).

This phone sleeps like a beast.

I've done a lot of battery life tweaking on Android (and Apple), but the best simple thing I found was in an article by a former Genius Bar employee.

1) Charge to 100%
2) Tell Siri to "set a timer for 15 minutes"
3) Unplug, turn screen off, and don't touch

When the timer goes off, Settings -> General -> Usage -> Battery

Usage time should = 0, Standby time = 15

I do this little quick operation every couple of weeks. If my usage isn't less than ~2 minutes, I hunt down the offending app(s). Normally the answer can be found in background app refresh or location settings. I limit location to apps I want to know where I am, and almost none of them get background refresh.

Those two simple things do great things for iPhone idle consumption. Basically drive it down to what you see in that screenshot. If I loose more than 2-3% at night, I hunt.

PS BT seems to idle really well. i.e. Marginal consumption when not being used.

 

[tekchic]

I read lots of threads about bad battery life and while I would stipulate occasionally there's probably a bad piece of hardware here or there, it's clearly not the OS or the hardware (when it's working correctly).

This phone sleeps like a beast.

I've done a lot of battery life tweaking on Android (and Apple), but the best simple thing I found was in an article by a former Genius Bar employee.

1) Charge to 100%
2) Tell Siri to "set a timer for 15 minutes"
3) Unplug, turn screen off, and don't touch

When the timer goes off, Settings -> General -> Usage -> Battery

Usage time should = 0, Standby time = 15

I do this little quick operation every couple of weeks. If my usage = standby, I hunt down the offending app(s). Normally the answer can be found in background app refresh or location settings. I limit location to apps I want to know where I am, and almost none of them get background refresh.

Those two simple things do great things for iPhone idle consumption. Basically drive it down to what you see in that screenshot. If I loose more than 2-3% at night, I hunt.

PS BT seems to idle really well. i.e. Marginal consumption when not being used.

That's a fantastic tip -- I'll definitely have to try that. My last iPhone was an iPhone 4, and I've spent two years in the Android world on a Galaxy S3, which required turning off EVERYTHING not in use. Wifi, GPS, Bluetooth -- all of it had to be off unless I was about to use it, or I'd be at 65% battery life by the time I got to work in the morning. It was a huge pain. I think some of that "turn off the Bluetooth when not in use" trickled over when I went back to full Apple gear again.

In fact, I was getting annoyed that every iOS update kept turning Bluetooth back on by default. Guess I"ll just let that puppy run now, then!