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How to Turn off iPhone Calls on Your Mac with OS X Yosemite

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With iOS 8.1 and OS X Yosemite you can answer phone calls from your iPhone on your Mac. This is a handy feature, but if you find it annoying it is easy to turn off phone calls on Macs with OS X Yosemite.

Turning off phone calls in OS X Yosemite is essential if you share an Apple ID with someone else in the house, and the Mac is ringing non stop, especially a family Mac with multiple users including a teen.

It’s similar to how you can stop all iPhones from ringing when you get a call, but you don’t need to share an Apple ID for this to be an interruption in your day.

Turn off iPhone calls on your Mac in seconds.

Turn off iPhone calls on your Mac in seconds.

Apple includes an off option in OS X Yosemite that still lets you  receive text messages on your Mac and use Handoff.

You’ll need to open FaceTime and head into the settings for this app to turn off iPhone calls on your Mac. It’s an odd place for the option, but at least it is front and center on the options.

Start FaceTime.

Start FaceTime.

Open FaceTime from your dock or using Spotlight to get into the app.

Open the FaceTime app to start.

Open preferences.

Once you are in FaceTime you need to click on FaceTime in the menu bar in the upper right of your screen.

Find the FaceTime preferences.

Find the FaceTime preferences.

Then click on Preferences. This shows all your numbers and associated FaceTime details, and the option to turn off iPhone calls on your Mac.

On this screen uncheck the Cellular calls option.

On this screen uncheck the Cellular calls option.

When you see your contact information, you will also see an option for iPhone Cellular Calls. This allows your Mac to use the iPhone to make calls and receive calls. Uncheck this option to turn off iPhone calls on the Mac.

If you use more than one Mac, you will need to do this on each machine that you want to turn the feature off for.

Overall this is an exciting feature, but it’s hard to ignore the pop ups on-screen that can interrupt work during the day. It’s also a surefire way to ruin a Netflix binge watching experience when you see your boss’s name pop up on the screen.

You can follow this guide to turn off iPhone calls on other iPhones in your house that share the same Apple ID and to turn off iPhone calls ringing on the iPad as well. It’s still in FaceTime settings, but it’s on the device that your calls ring to, not on your main iPhone.

This feature works with newer Macs and Phones on iOS 8 and higher and OS X Yosemite and higher. If you don’t see these options you may not be on the newest software. Both of these are free upgrades.

4 Comments

4 Comments

  1. Paul

    10/27/2014 at 9:13 am

    Thank you! That was SO annoying!

  2. David Michael (@demichae)

    12/09/2014 at 8:38 am

    I believe you mean upper left corner. And your solution did not work. I still get annoying pop ups about calls. I just tried turning FaceTime off. Hopefully that works.

  3. Charis

    12/18/2014 at 2:16 pm

    This was awesome! Do you also know how to turn off iMessage notifications in Yosemite? Thanks!

  4. Megan Kae

    01/02/2018 at 10:08 pm

    Turned off FaceTime on my iMac according to the directions. Seemed to turn off. However, the next time I turned my computer on FaceTime launched again. Really frustrated because I never use it but it launches whenever I turn on the computer or wake it up! I see my face looking right back at me and I have to turn it off again. I would love to disable the danged but of course Apple won’t let me! After learning how Apple invades our lives by slowing down the previous generation iPhones….they say to preserve battery, etc.! I may switch to Android and Windows!

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