The last time I tried to make video chat work with people, we dived between jitsi, facebook messenger, zoom… until something worked well enough. what are people using here now? Jitsi? Google Meet? Whatsapp? Facebook Messenger? Zoom? Skype? Facetime, somehow? The builtin thing in matrix that used to be jitsi but I think they updated it? Microsoft Teams? What?
Whatever the other person uses. Everyone uses something different and I raarely feel like convincing someone to switch to something new, much less helping them figure out how to do it. Of my circle of friends, it’s least painful for me to just find out what they already use and install it myself.
Unless it’s facetime.
Good catch. That’s one I’ve never encountered. Also now that I think of it, if Facebook has video calls, I wouldn’t install it.
True as far as you calling them, but they can call us on Facetime.
I usually use Signal.
Signal.
ah, I forgot about Signal since I don’t like to video chat alone.
Signal
This. Slowly but surely everyone around me has migrated to Signal. It’s reliable and avoids all kinds of restrictions while remaining secure and private. Nothing more can be asked of it.
Nothing more can be asked of it.
Arguable, the ability it already had of being able to also receive SMS so you wouldn’t be stuck using two apps to accommodate the non Signal users of your life.
Yeah most people I know that used signal stopped using it when they took this away.
I use like twelve apps to acommodate the non-Signal users of my life… And Signal is pretty much just a note-to-self app at this point, nobody else uses it.
I mean, they could enable automatic cloud backups (and I do mean enable, the solution is built into the system quite neatly and their automatic backups are already well-encrypted so they’re just being ridiculous about security theater instead of letting us have a very important feature). And they could stand to make the cross-device experience (much) better.
but mostly, I wish anybody I knew used it. I’m wondering what kind of circle you’re in where everybody started using signal.
I wish anybody I knew used it.
I was the first person I know to even hear about it. I’ve gotten a few people on it, but it’s a harder sell now that they don’t support SMS. Back when they did, anyone could use it as their main messaging app. Now it can only be used to message other people who have it, and nobody wants to switch to something that they can only use to talk to one person.
I was the first in my entire immediate family, got them all to switch to it. Helps that it’s easy to use
so they’re just being ridiculous about security theater instead of letting us have a very important feature)
Have you ever checked the size of the backups, especially the people who never delete things? How many people are throwing money signals way, and do you think more servers and storage would be free for them? That would probably end Signal being free.
I didn’t say they should back up on their servers. I think they should enable Androi’ds built in feature to save a file to a cloud location so I can auto-save backups to my cloud server of choice.
Jitsi.
No installs required on any participant. No login required (except for host recently). No time limit or user limit (maybe there is but we use it and have never had any problems). Works awesome.
If something costs nothing then you are the product though. Have you looked into their TOS?
Yes. They’re quite reasonable, especially considering you don’t even need an account. https://tosdr.org/en/service/2201
It’s a Free Software product. They are owned by 8x8 which charges for its video solutions, but Jitsi is absolutely free and Free. https://www.8x8.com/products/plans-and-pricing
you don’t even need an account.
That’s sadly not true anymore for their own hosted service:
https://jitsi.org/blog/authentication-on-meet-jit-si/
tl;dr: you need to login with a Google, Facebook or Github login to create a room
Wa wa wa FOSS nerds. Don’t try and push shit on me if you don’t fully understand it.
Jitsi is FOSS and you can self-host it.
Discord.
Google meet for most people and WhatsApp video with family.
Mostly Meet. My family is mostly on android and it comes pre installed and built into the phone app most of the time so it’s really easy to get the older family members to use. I did have to have my Parents download it on their iPhones but they didn’t fight cause video calling the grandchild is important lol.
Whatever you used don’t use Microsoft teams. I’m so so sick and tired of that piece of crap. Literally anything will fail, at random. Need to demo a software update to a coworker? Ups, screen share suddenly just gives a black display. Now your audio just flat out refuses to work. Now you don’t have a camera. Half the calls I get won’t ring on my Desktop, incant pick up the call. Teams mobile on Android is a similar shit show.
Then, Go to google Meet, everything works perfectly fine and the video quality is just plain better.
Yet so many companies have this “we need to do everything with Microsoft because Microsoft goooood”
Edit: just saw this is an Android sub. My bad. Still, I’ll leave it here because teams on Android is a shit show as well, so is Microsoft skype.
Work: MS teams if it’s internal or the client uses teams. Zoom typically if they don’t. Slack for on demand calls.
Home: what’s app video calls.
I avoid video chat as much as possible, but use Jitsi at work.
FaceTime
It’s such a rare use case that there’s no point in installing something else for me
Ah, I figured there wouldn’t be too many FaceTime people in the android community, but here we are.
I didn’t even realize I was in the android community tbh. Just scrolling local
I really should read more before replying 😂
We’re all friends and some of us have both Android and iOS phones. Facetime is excellent.
I also use Signal or Skype, though the latter usually from my PC.
I was lucky to be able to convince most of my family to use Telegram. Now that they are comfortable I can’t get them to try anything else.
I really like Telegram generally, including for voice and video. Having native desktop clients too sweetens the deal, even on platforms like Linux. Plus it feels fairly native on each platform, so that makes it easier to get people to switch, versus “this app feels too foreign/clunky on my OS”. Signal is a pretty lousy experience on iOS for example.
Webex at Work (best endpoints) Portal for family WebRTC based server with STUN for friends
