iOS 15 has brought many innovations to the iPhone. Among other things, you can now blur the background in FaceTime so that you can hide your messy room during video calls.
With so many of us still working from home we often feel the need to hide our environment from our colleagues during video calls. While it's relatively easily to blur the background with services such as Microsoft Teams or Zoom, users of FaceTime have been at a disadvantage as it hasn't been possible - until now.
If you install iOS 15 on your iPhone (and iPadOS on your iPad) it will be possible to blur the background in video calls.
However, not all iPhones that run iOS 15 will be able to blur the background in FaceTime unfortunately. To be able to implement this features the iPhone needs 'Portrait Mode for Videos' and at least the Apple A12 chip installed. The feature is therefore available on all models from the iPhone XR (the iPhone SE 2 can also take advantage of this feature).
Here is how to hide your background in FaceTime
- Open the FaceTime app on your iPhone.
- Call your desired contact.
- Tap on the picture of you in the bottom left to enlarge it.
- Tap on the icon on the right of your image that looks like a person in a frame.
- This will activate portrait mode. Unfortunately, the degree of blur is not adjustable (And, frankly, is not really enough!)
It will also be possible to blur the background on the Mac once macOS Monterey becomes available to install.
