How To Make Phone Calls From Your Mac Through Your Iphone

With Continuity, your Mac and iPhone work pretty well together. You can seamlessly transition between the two platforms…including make phone calls right from your computer. Here’s how.

RELATED: How to Make Macs and iOS Devices Work Together Seamlessly with Continuity

For this to work, your Mac and iPhone need to be near to each other. Handoff uses the Bluetooth Low Energy protocol which has a maximum range of about 30 feet outdoors with a clear line of sight. Inside, with walls and wires in the way, its reach is a lot less. Depending on the construction of your house, you might need your iPhone and Mac to be in the same room. The only way to find out is to try and see what happens.

Receiving Phone Calls

Receiving a phone call is pretty simple. If your iPhone and Mac are in range, whenever you get a phone call a notification will show up on your Mac. Click Accept to answer it.

This picks the phone call up on your Mac, where it’s routed through your iPhone. If you’ve got a headset on, you’ll be able to chat through that. Otherwise, it will use your Mac’s built in microphone and speakers.

At any time, if you want to continue the phone call on your iPhone, you can tap Touch to Return to Call at the top of the screen. This disconnects your Mac so you’re just using your iPhone normally.

Making a Phone Call

Making a phone call is also quite simple. Since there’s no Phone app on macOS, you have to use either FaceTime or Contacts.

With the FaceTime app, search for the contact you want to call.

Click the phone icon and then select the number you want to dial under Call Using iPhone.

This will start a phone call using your Mac as the speakers and microphone.

This also works if you just enter a phone number manually in the search bar.

With the Contacts app, the process is much the same. Find the contact you want to call and then click the phone button.

Alternatively, if you come across a phone number online (and the web designer has marked it as a phone number), you can just click on it to call from your Mac.

Whatever method you use will only work if your iPhone is within range. If you try to make a phone call while it’s too far away, it will fail.