Open FaceTime Call from Command Line

By  on  

Communication tools are always associated with UIs, and for good reason -- if you want communication to be easy and intuitive, you need easy and intuitive interfaces. We need communication tools to provide the lowest barrier of entry, since not all users will be tech savvy.

For tech experts like us, however, we love command line tools to automate just about everything. This led me to thinking: is it possible to initiate a FaceTIme call from command line?

# Call Jenny
open facetime://5558675309

Using the FaceTime protocol, you can start a FaceTime call from command line with the recipient's phone number.

My children better hope that I don't get remote access to their computers when they move away -- they'll suddenly be calling their mother every day!

Recent Features

  • By
    Designing for Simplicity

    Before we get started, it's worth me spending a brief moment introducing myself to you. My name is Mark (or @integralist if Twitter happens to be your communication tool of choice) and I currently work for BBC News in London England as a principal engineer/tech...

  • By
    5 More HTML5 APIs You Didn’t Know Existed

    The HTML5 revolution has provided us some awesome JavaScript and HTML APIs.  Some are APIs we knew we've needed for years, others are cutting edge mobile and desktop helpers.  Regardless of API strength or purpose, anything to help us better do our job is a...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    CSS Vertical Centering

    Front-end developing is beautiful, and it's getting prettier by the day. Nowadays we got so many concepts, methodologies, good practices and whatnot to make our work stand out from the rest. Javascript (along with its countless third party libraries) and CSS have grown so big, helping...

  • By
    Create a Trailing Mouse Cursor Effect Using MooTools

    Remember the old days of DHTML and effects that were an achievement to create but had absolutely no value? Well, a trailing mouse cursor script is sorta like that. And I'm sorta the type of guy that creates effects just because I can.

Discussion

    Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!