Macs All-in-One For Dummies, 4th Edition (2014)

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Adding buddies to your account

If you’re brand new to IM, setting up a chat account is only the beginning. Your next step is to contact your friends and other contacts you want to chat with, to exchange IM account names. Think of account names as telephone numbers; you can’t call a friend without knowing her phone number, and you can’t chat with someone if you don’t know her account name.

Chances are that you have IM account names in Contacts without even knowing it. As we mention earlier, Google Talk uses Google Mail (@gmail.com) addresses, and iOS devices can use mobile phone numbers as the identification for iMessages. You also want to store your friends’ account names in buddy lists, which you use to initiate chats with all but the iMessage service

Storing names in a buddy list

In all IM accounts — except iMessage, which accesses Contacts — stored names automatically appear in your Messages buddy lists whenever your friends log in to their particular chat app (which can be an app other than Messages, such as AOL Instant Messenger for Mac or Windows, or even a mobile chat app running on a smartphone).

If you use iMessage only, you can skip the buddy list section and go directly to the section “Chatting with Others.”

To add a name to your buddy list, follow these steps:

1. Click the Messages icon on the Dock or Launchpad to launch Messages.

2. Choose Window⇒Buddies or the name of the account you want to add buddies to, such as Gmail or AIM.

You have to be online to add buddies; click Offline under your name to open the pop-up menu and choose Available.

3. Choose Buddies⇒Add Buddy.

Or click the Add (+) button in the lower-left corner of the Buddies window, and if the pop-up menu appears, select Add Buddy.

A dialog appears, as shown in Figure 3-3.

Figure 3-3: Add a buddy by chat account name or e-mail address.

4. Fill in your buddy’s chat account name and real name.

You have two ways to do so:

· Type your buddy’s account name and real name in the text boxes shown in Figure 3-3. Depending on the chat account your buddy has, the account name might be a single word or an e-mail address.

Filling in your buddy’s first and last name is for your convenience only. If you don’t know someone’s first or last name, or if you prefer to see his chat account name rather than his real name in your buddy list, just leave the name fields blank.

· Add contacts from Contacts. Click the down-arrow button next to the Last Name field (refer to Figure 3-3) to expand the Add Buddy dialog and show names from the Contacts app. Use the search field or click the scroll arrows — both are visible in Figure 3-4 — to locate your buddy’s contact card and then click your buddy’s name to select him or her.

Your buddy’s account name, first name, and last name automatically fill in the related fields of the Add Buddy dialog.

If Contacts holds many records, it might be easier to search for a name rather than scroll through your list. In the search field, type in the first few letters of the name of the person you want to add as a buddy. Potential matches appear in the names list. The more letters you type, the narrower the results.

Figure 3-4: Clicking a buddy’s contact card automatically fills in the blanks.

5. (Optional) Click the column heading to the right of the Name column (named Instant Message in Figure 3-4).

This opens a pop-up menu that lets you choose to display a contact’s IM address, e-mail address, or phone number.

6. (Optional) Open the Add to Group pop-up menu and choose the group category where you want to store your friend’s name.

(See the upcoming section “Creating groups” to learn how to do that.)

By default, new buddies go to the Buddies group. You can change which group your buddy appears in at any time.

7. Click the Add button.

Your new buddy appears in your buddy list.

8. Repeat Steps 2–7 to add other people to your buddy lists.

If a buddy has more than one account type, add a new buddy for each account. Each account will appear in the group where you store it.

Viewing your buddies

If you don’t see your newly added buddy (or buddies you previously added) in your buddy list, you might have inadvertently chosen a Messages option to hide offline buddies from your buddy list. Messages gives you many options for viewing your buddies’ status, all accessed from the View menu. When you see a check mark next to the item, it’s active. You can choose one or more of the following:

· Show Buddy Pictures: Displays the image your buddy has assigned himself.

· Show Audio Status: Lets you know whether your buddy has audio capabilities.

· Show Video Status: Lets you know whether your buddy has video capabilities.

· Show Offline Buddies: Lists both online and offline buddies together; offline buddies’ names are dimmed in the list.

· Use Groups: Divides the Buddies list by account. When deselected, all buddies are in one continuous list.

· Use Offline Group: Shows offline buddies in a group of their own and only online buddies in each account group. Use Groups must be selected to activate the Use Offline Group option.

· Buddy Names: From the submenu, choose how you want to see your buddies’ names displayed: Full Names (Lucy Cane); Short Names (Lucy); or Handles (account names: Lucyblue).

· Sort Buddies: From the submenus choose

· By Availability: Groups all buddies who are online and available for chatting when you are.

· By Name: Sorts buddies by name; use the lower part of the menu to choose First Name, Last Name (to sort buddies alphabetically by first name) or Last Name, First Name (to sort buddies alphabetically by last name).

· Manually: Allows you to drag names to sort them any which way you want. Select Use Groups to make this option active.

To see more information about a buddy, click the buddy and then choose Buddies⇒Show Info or Buddies⇒Show Profile (each gives you access to the other). You can lock the photo you want to see for your buddy, add or change information (such as a nickname or IM service), and, when you view the Profile, you can see which capabilities your buddy has for communicating with you, as shown in Figure 3-5.

Figure 3-5: View your buddy’s profile.

Creating groups

When you add a name to your buddy list, you see it in the Buddies list. If you choose View⇒Use Groups, the buddies list is divided into groups — at the minimum, Buddies and Bonjour, and Offline if you choose View⇒Use Offline Group. You can add other more descriptive groups — for example, Family or Golf Club — which are helpful if you have a lot of buddies or like to initiate group chats or broadcast a group message. You can always move or copy a buddy’s chat account name to a different group or even create completely new groups, such as a group of people involved in a specific project. You can also grant a buddy membership in multiple groups simultaneously.

To create a group, follow these steps:

1. Choose View⇒Use Groups.

2. Click the Add (+) button in the bottom-left corner of the Buddy List window and choose Add Group from the pop-up menu.

A dialog appears, asking for a group name.

You can rename a group by right-clicking the group name and choosing Rename Group from the shortcut menu that appears.

3. Type a descriptive name for your group in the Enter Group Name text box and click the Add button.

Your new group appears in the buddy list, ready for you to copy or move names into your newly created group.

4. Click the triangle to the left of the Buddies group in the window to reveal all your buddies added to date. Then do one of the following:

· Move the name to a new group. Click and drag a name from Buddies to the new group. The name leaves the Buddies group and shows up in the new group.

· Copy the name to a new group. Hold down the Option key while clicking and dragging a name from Buddies to the new group. The name remains in Buddies and is copied to the new group.

When you add a buddy, choose the group where you want the name to appear.

Deleting names and groups in a buddy list

Eventually, you might want to prune names from your buddy lists to make it easier to keep track of people you actually chat with on a regular basis.

To delete a name from your buddy list, follow these steps:

1. In the Buddies window, click the disclosure triangle next to a group to display the names in that group.

2. Click the name you want to delete.

3. Choose Buddies⇒Remove Buddy (or press the Delete key).

A confirmation dialog appears, asking whether you really want to delete the name.

4. Click the Remove button (or Cancel if you suddenly change your mind before giving your buddy the axe).

Rather than delete names one by one, you can also delete a group and all names stored in that group. To delete a group from your buddy list, follow these steps:

1. In the Buddies window, right-click a group that you want to delete.

2. Choose Delete Group from the shortcut menu that appears.

A confirmation dialog opens, asking whether you really want to delete this group and all names in the group.

3. Click Delete (or Cancel).

Chatting with Others

You can chat with someone in five ways, and we tell you how in this section:

· Text: You type messages back and forth to each other. Anyone on your buddies list or in Contacts (who uses iMessages) can use text chatting — IM — because it requires only an Internet connection and a keyboard.

· Audio: You can talk to and hear the other person, much like a telephone. To participate in audio chatting, each person (there can be up to ten chat participants) needs a microphone and speakers or headphones. Most Macs come with a built-in microphone, but you might want an external microphone, such as one built into a headset, to capture your voice (and hear the other person’s side of the conversation) more clearly.

· Video: You can talk to, hear, and see the other person in a live video window. Participating in a video chat with a buddy (or up to three buddies in a multiperson video chat) requires a video camera, such as the FaceTime video camera built in to all new and recent iMacs, MacBooks, and Apple displays. If your Mac is a model without a video camera (or if you want to connect a different kind of video camera to your Mac that has a built-in FaceTime video camera), you can buy and connect an external video camera that is USB Video Class (UVC), such as one of the models offered by Microsoft (www.microsoft.com/hardware), Creative Labs (www.creative.com), or Logitech (www.logitech.com).

· Screen Sharing: You can talk to and hear the other person while you take over her screen, mouse, and keyboard to fill your screen as though you’re sitting in front of her computer. Likewise, your chat partner can take over your screen and control your keyboard or mouse as if she were sitting in front of your computer. iMessage and Yahoo! do not support screen sharing.

· File Sharing: You can talk and hear each other while you share a file (or files), such as a document, a Keynote presentation, or photos in your iPhoto library. The files you want to share appear on your chatting partner’s screen. Likewise, if your chatting partner is sharing photos (or other files) with you, you see her on your screen.

If your Internet connection is too slow, Messages might refuse to let you start an audio or video chat.

Initiating a text chat

When you open Messages, the window has two parts (choose Window⇒Messages if you don’t see it). The left pane shows a list of your previous and active chats divided by account type (empty the first time you open Messages). Click a name in the left column, and the conversation appears on the right pane, as shown in Figure 3-6.

Figure 3-6: The Messages window shows who you’ve chatted with (left) and the conversation (right).

Just because someone is connected to the Internet doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s in front of his computer and/or wants to chat. So if you find your IMs falling on deaf ears (or fingertips) and the person isn’t bothering to reply to your messages or chat requests, chances are that the buddy you’re trying to chat with has gone fishing or is otherwise away from his computer.

To initiate a chat with someone, follow these steps:

1. Click the Messages icon on the Dock or Launchpad.

Choose Window⇒Messages if you don’t see the Messages window.

2. Click the New Message button (looks like a pencil writing on a note pad) at the top of the chat list on the left side.

New Message appears at the top of the chat list, and a blank screen appears on the right.

3. Begin typing the name of the person to whom you want to send an IM; potential matches from Contacts appear.

Or, do the following:

Click the Add button (the plus sign) in the upper-left corner. This opens Contacts, which has a Buddies group in addition to the groups you have in Contacts. In Contacts, you can click Buddies to see those you added to Messages previously, and you can click All Contacts or one of the groups and scroll through to find the contact you seek.

A blue conversation bubble next to a name means that the contact uses iMessage.

4. Click the name of the person with whom you want to chat.

It appears in the To field, in a blue bubble, which means that you can communicate with iMessage or the account associated with that contact. The account type appears in the message text box at the bottom of the screen, where you type your message.

Unless otherwise specified as being an address for another IM account, Messages presumes that any phone number or e-mail in Contacts is iMessage-able. If you select it and the bubble is red, the number or address is not registered with iMessage, and clicking the disclosure triangle next to the address or number confirms that.

5. (Optional) Repeat Steps 3 and 4 to add more people and create a group chat.

You can’t add members to an iMessage chat after it begins (although you can with the other services). You can, however, have a one-on-one chat with a person and then chat with that same person in a group chat.

You can also initiate a chat from your Buddies list. Choose Window⇒ Buddies. Double-click the name of the person or group with whom you want to chat, and a New Message window opens. Or click a name once and choose an action from the Buddies menu or click one of the buttons at the bottom of the Buddies window.

6. Type a message in the text box at the bottom of the chat window and press Return to send your message; refer to Figure 3-6.

The recipient of your message will see something like Figure 3-7 on his Desktop (if he uses Messages). If he uses a different IM app, the user interface will probably be different — but that’s his problem. If the recipient replies to your message, you see the response in the right pane of the Messages window, and you can start typing messages back and forth to one another. You type in the lower text box, and your dialogue with the other person appears in the main text box. You see an ellipsis while the other person writes the response.

Figure 3-7: An invitation to chat.

If you want to insert emoticons — those little smiley faces — in your text message, click the smiley face at the right end of the text-entry box (refer to Figure 3-6).

Choose Messages⇒Preferences⇒Viewing to change the colors and fonts used for your text chats. Choose View⇒Messages to choose how you see balloons, boxes, names, and pictures in text chats.

Initiating an audio or a video chat

To initiate an audio chat, everyone needs a microphone and speakers, which are standard equipment on iMacs and Macbooks (add-ons for Mac minis or MacPros) and on most Windows PCs (if that’s what the person or people you want to chat with are using).

To initiate a video chat, everyone’s computer needs a microphone and a video camera. Macs with a built-in FaceTime or iSight video camera can use that, but for Macs without a built-in FaceTime or iSight camera, you have three options:

· Plug a digital video camcorder into your Mac’s FireWire port (if your Mac model has a FireWire port; some don’t).

· Buy a USB Video Class (UVC) video camera from Logitech (www.logitech.com), Creative Labs (www.creative.com), or Microsoft (www.microsoft.com/hardware), and plug it into your Mac.

· Conduct a one-way video chat in which you see the other person but the other person only hears your voice. If the person you’re chatting with doesn’t have a video camera but you do, the opposite occurs in which she sees you, but you only hear her.

Including you, up to ten people can participate in an audio chat. Video chats are limited to four people, and each must have a video camera connected to their computer along with a fast Internet connection (a minimum of 100 Kbps).

You can initiate an audio or video chat by following these steps:

1. While in an IM chat, click the video icon in the upper-right corner and then choose Audio or Video.

Or, choose Window⇒Buddies and then click the audio or video button next to the name of the person you want to initiate the chat with.

If you’re chatting in iMessage, FaceTime opens, and a FaceTime call is initiated.

In AIM, Google Talk, Jabber, and Bonjour — which support Audio Chat (Yahoo! does not) — a message appears, informing you that your audio chat invitation is sent and that Messages is waiting for a reply.

If this feature is dimmed, you don’t have a microphone on your Mac, or you don’t have a fast enough Internet connection to support audio chatting.

If you don’t see a Video Chat icon next to your buddy’s name in the Buddy List window, your buddy does not have a video camera built-in or connected to his computer. If you see a Video Chat icon next to your buddy’s name but it’s dimmed, your buddy is currently in a video chat with another buddy or group of buddies.

2. The buddy whom you invite to an audio or video chat clicks the Accept button.

Your chat begins, and you can both start talking as though you were speaking over a telephone or having a face-to-face conversation.

3. Fine-tune your session:

· Volume: Drag the volume slider to adjust the sound level.

· More buddies: If you click the plus-sign button, you can invite another person into your chat.

· Mute: Click the Mute button (the microphone icon with a slash through it) in case you need to shout at your dog to stop barking at the cat, or whatever else you want to say but don’t want your audio chat partner to hear.

· Move window: You can click and hold on your live video-chat window and drag it to any corner in your buddy’s live video window so you can see your buddy better.

4. (Optional) Choose from these additional options for video chats:

· Effects: Click the Effects button in the bottom-left corner of the video chat window to open a window showing several different visual effects that you can choose to change how your live video appears on your buddy’s screen. Click a visual effect to select it and then click the Close button to close the visual effects window.

· Zoom: Click the Zoom button (double arrows) to make the video chat window fill your Mac’s entire screen. Press the Escape key to close the full-screen view and return to the window view.

· Pause: Choose Video⇒Pause Video to interrupt transmission of your side of the video; this also mutes the video.

· Snapshot: Choose Video⇒Take Snapshot, which captures the moment onscreen.

Here is another way to take a snapshot during a video chat: -click in the center of the video and drag the image out of the window. The file will be on the Desktop or in whichever folder you dragged it to, and is named Image.tiff.

· Click and drag a file to the video window to send a file to the person you’re chatting with.

Even if your Mac has a camera and a fast Internet connection, someone you want to connect with in a video chat might not. In that case, you might be limited to using an audio or text chat instead.

Sharing files, photos, and screens

While you’re chatting either with instant messages, audio, or video, sharing files, documents, and photos is as easy as dragging the file to the Messages text field and pressing Return. If you’re in the middle of a video chat, drag the file to the video screen, and off it goes.

When you’re chatting on Jabber, AIM, Google Talk, or Bonjour (but not iMessage or Yahoo!) with another Mac user, you can share your screen and let your buddy control it as though it were her screen (or vice versa, if a buddy shares her screen with you). Here’s how to do it:

1. Start a conversation with the buddy who you want to share your screen with or whose screen you want to share.

2. Choose Buddies⇒Share My Screen or choose Buddies⇒Ask to Share Screen.

· Share My Screen: Fills your buddy’s screen with your screen, as though he’s seated in front of your Mac, which he can now control with his mouse and keyboard.

· Ask to Share Screen: Fills your screen with your friend’s screen as though you’re seated in front of his Mac and controlling it with your keyboard and mouse (assuming your buddy has granted you permission).

3. After your buddy receives your request, she can respond by Accepting, Declining, or Replying to your request.

4. To end either type of the sharing session, press the X in the corner.

Saving or deleting your conversations

Messages saves your conversations until you delete them. When they get particularly long, though, you might like to save them and start fresh with the same person. Do the following to save and delete your text chats:

1. Click the Messages icon on the Dock or Launchpad.

2. Click the buddy with whom you have an ongoing conversation you want to save.

Your conversation appears in the right pane of the Messages window.

3. Choose File⇒Print.

4. Click the PDF button at the bottom of the window and choose Save as PDF.

5. Type in a name for the file, choose a folder where you want to store it, and then click Save.

6. Choose File⇒Delete Conversation or hover the pointer over the chat list on the right end of the conversation you want to delete, and then click the X.

Interpreting status indicators

When you look at your buddies list, you see different icons next to the names of your buddies. The colored bullets let you know your buddy’s status; a phone or video icon tells you the type of chat her computer supports.

· Red bullet: Your buddy has an Away status and is unavailable to receive messages.

· Yellow bullet: Your buddy is available but hasn’t used his computer for 15 minutes or more.

· Green bullet: Your buddy is available.

· Gray bullet: Your buddy’s status can’t be determined.

· Telephone: Your buddy’s computer has a microphone, and she can have audio chats. If the telephone icon has depth, her computer supports multiperson audio chats.

· Video camera: Your buddy’s computer has a video camera, and he can have video chats. If the video icon has depth, his computer supports multiperson video chats.

· Wi-Fi: Your buddy receives notifications of chat requests on her mobile phone.

Making Yourself Available (Or Not) for Chatting

As soon as you connect to the Internet, your Mac broadcasts your availability to all the friends in your buddy lists. The moment someone wants to chat with you, you’ll see a window and maybe hear an audible alert. Choose how you want to be notified about incoming Messages requests from Notification Center (⇒System Preferences⇒Notification Center), which we explain in Book I, Chapter 6.

Chat invitations can be fun to receive, but sometimes they can be distracting if you’re trying to get work done and don’t want to stop what you’re doing to chat with someone. One thing you can do is change the status description others see next to your name in their own buddy lists. Changing your status description to Away or something that indicates you’re not in a chatting mode can discourage others from sending you chat invitations until they see that you’ve set your status to Available again.

Changing your status

To let others know that you’re busy, you can change your status message to indicate that you’re out to lunch, on the phone, or revising a big book and not really in the mood to chat with others unless it’s about something really important. (Otherwise, you might as well just exit Messages altogether.)

Although you change your status to indicate that you’re away or unavailable to chat, you can still receive chat messages and invitations your buddies send if they choose to disregard your status message. Therefore, you still need to click Reply or Decline for each invitation you receive.

Alternatively, you can change your status to make yourself invisible, which means that you don’t appear in your friends’ Buddies windows. However, you still see your friends in your Buddies window (unless they choose to make themselves invisible, in which case neither of you can see the other).

To change the status that friends see about you in their buddy list, choose Window⇒Buddies and then click the arrow button beneath your name in the Buddies window to open the My Status menu. (Alternatively, you can choose Messages⇒My Status to open the My Status menu.) Choose a status line, as shown in Figure 3-8, and your chosen status now appears in your friends’ buddy lists. The top half shows variations on Available (and displays) a green dot next to your name, and the bottom half shows different ways of explaining why you are unavailable or Away (and displays a red dot).

Figure 3-8: The My Status menu provides a variety of statuses you can display.

If you have multiple accounts, you can choose a different status for each account; for example, on the account you use with colleagues and associates, you may want your status to read Emergencies Only or On the Phone. For your friends, you may want something clever like Should be working. You can also opt to use the same status for all accounts by choosing Use Same Status for All Accounts at the bottom of the My Status menu on the Messages Buddies window.

You can also choose a status that lets your buddies know you’re available and what you’re doing, such as surfing the web or reading e-mail. If you choose Current iTunes Song, people can see the name of the song you’re listening to. If you choose Custom Available, you can type your own message that others will see. Choosing Custom Away lets you type your own Away message.