Basics: How to Activate FaceTime on the iPhone

If you’re trying to use the FaceTime feature on your new iPhone 4 and find that there are no on-screen buttons to tap or any way to access it, it’s likely not available because you restored your new iPhone 4 with a backup of your previous iPhone, which for some bizarre reason disables FaceTime. You’ll need to reactivate it in the iPhone’s Settings (new iPhone 4 owners who don’t restore from a backup have FaceTime accessible by default).

To activate FaceTime, you must go into the iPhone’s Settings, scroll down and tap Phone, then slide the FaceTime slider to On, like thus:

After it’s activated, you can make a FaceTime call by selecting one of your contacts and tapping the FaceTime button (see image below. FaceTime requires the other person to have an iPhone 4 or newer and FaceTime activated, and that you both be on a Wi-Fi network). You can also make a normal phone call, then switch over to FaceTime in the middle of it by tapping the FaceTime button. This might be a better way to instigate a FaceTime call, as you can get the caller’s permission first (not everyone is ready to be on camera at a moment’s notice).

Be sure to check out more of our iPhone Tips.

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7 Responses

  1. Mike says:

    Hmm. I have an iPhone 4 running 4.0.1 but I have no FaceTime button with any of my contacts and no FaceTime slider in Settings>Phone. Any advice?

  2. ibrahim says:

    i have no facetime

  3. min oo says:

    thanks you for info.it’s helpful.keep going guys.

  4. helmi says:

    i have facetime menu on phone setting, but no facetime button at the contact name. how to get that?

    please email me at theviper[a]ehoza[dot]com

  5. sumiko says:

    I’ve turned on the facetime button on the iphone4, but how come it always show” waiting for activation”.

  6. Trevor says:

    My iphone is AT&T in the states, but I have my SIM card deactivated. I’m currently working in Saudi Arabia and have wifi. When I first got here there was no problem with wifi. Now, all of a sudden I can’t get it to work. When I slide facetime to on, it says waiting for activation. What do I do??????

  7. Leonard says:

    I need your help on 16 Gb iPhone 4’s Facetime, I can’t activate the facetime because it doesn’t have a Facetime slider on/off option and also the TTY slider is not there

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