FaceTime Links

The facetime URL scheme is used to initiate a FaceTime call to a specified user. You can use the phone number or email address of a user to initiate the call. When a user taps a FaceTime link in a webpage, iOS confirms that the user really wants to initiate a FaceTime call before proceeding. When an app opens a URL with the facetime scheme, iOS opens the FaceTime app and initiates the call without prompting the user. When opening FaceTime URLs on macOS, the system always prompts the user before initiating a call.

You can specify FaceTime links explicitly in both web and native iOS apps using the facetime URL scheme. The following examples show the strings formatted for Safari and for a native app:

• HTML links for FaceTime video calls:

  <a href="facetime:14085551234">Connect using FaceTime</a>

  <a href="facetime:user@example.com">Connect using FaceTime</a>

• HTML links for FaceTime audio calls (iOS only):

  <a href="facetime-audio:14085551234">Connect using FaceTime</a>

  <a href="facetime-audio:user@example.com">Connect using FaceTime</a>

• Native app URL strings for FaceTime video calls:

  facetime:// 14085551234

  facetime://user@example.com

• Native app URL strings for FaceTime audio calls (iOS only):

  facetime-audio:// 14085551234

  facetime-audio://user@example.com

To prevent users from maliciously redirecting calls or changing the behavior of a phone or account, the FaceTime app supports most, but not all, of the special characters in the facetime schemes. Specifically, if a URL contains the * or # characters, the app ignores those characters when they are included after the phone number. If your app receives URL strings from the user or from an unknown source, use the stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding: method of NSString to generate a properly escaped version of the original string before opening the URL.