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Get rid of FaceTime's annoying floating bubbles

Here's how to make your FaceTime video calls much easier to view.

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Alison DeNisco Rayome Managing Editor
Managing Editor Alison DeNisco Rayome joined CNET in 2019, and is a member of the Home team. She is a co-lead of the CNET Tips and We Do the Math series, and manages the Home Tips series, testing out new hacks for cooking, cleaning and tinkering with all of the gadgets and appliances in your house. Alison was previously an editor at TechRepublic.
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Alison DeNisco Rayome
FaceTime

iOS 15 finally lets you ditch this haphazard layout in favor of something more organized. 

 Apple

Apple's latest operating system, iOS 15, launched in September, bringing new features to the tech giant's popular video chat platform, FaceTime. (Here's how to download iOS 15 today.) Along with portrait mode, spatial audio and the ability to schedule calls in advance, and invite those with Android and Windows devices to join FaceTime calls from their browsers, Apple also finally added a grid view. 

This story is part of WWDC 2022, CNET's complete coverage from and about Apple's annual developers conference.

Read more: Move over, Netflix Party. Apple's FaceTime watch party is coming

It's a simple change, but it fixes an irritating FaceTime feature where people on the call appeared as random-sized tiles, which could make it hard to tell who was speaking. Now, you can choose to view others on the call in a neat grid of similarly sized squares -- making FaceTime appear a bit more like Zoom. 

When you do download iOS 15, here's how to enable grid view on your FaceTime calls. 

How to turn on grid view on FaceTime

1. Start or join a FaceTime call. 

2. Tap the call toolbar at the top of the screen to expand it. (This is the same for both the iPhone version and the browser version on Android or Windows.)

3. Tap the Grid Layout button on the right. If it's on, it will turn solid white. 

That should move everyone into a nice grid view, and highlight the current speaker. 

For more, check out how to use FaceTime on Android and Windows devices, and everything else to know about iOS 15. 

wwdc-facetime
Watch this: Apple debuts new FaceTime features for iOS 15

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