On OS Mavericks, When i Face Time it lowers the system volume. Like iTunes and the adjustment sounds for volume up, and down, and such. Is there a setting, or preference to stop it from lowering every other volume?

I also want to be able to turn off this feature as well. Seriously, why in the world would they add this feature WITHOUT including the ability to turn it off?

I also want to be able to turn off this feature as well, please help apple ????????????????????????????,

I would love a solution to this. Anybody find some Terminal code to disable it?

This is my understanding of calls made over an internet conection.

When you Factime or skype etc. The conversation can only go one way, ie: you would have to cease talking for you to hear the other party to talk. If your music is to loud, it will be picked up in the microphone as if you were conversing and the other party would not get a word in.

Please actually read the thread before posting.

This only exists with Facetime because some developer at apple decided to reduce system volume during facetime calls. That is, only facetime has full volume, the rest of the system does not.

Oooo Sorry,,,,, for trying to help...

SO annoying, APPLE NEEDS TO HURRY UP and resolve this issue already. Mavericks has been out for a while now and its an extremely annoying feature for people who use facetime. I even used SKYPE many times to resolve this issue, TAKE THAT APPLE!

Good that someone other than me is complaining about this. Why can't it be like iChat... er, Messages, sorry... where I control the volume myself? It doesn't have to lower everything else that much. Extremely annoying. Better yet, why can't FaceTime just be built into iChat/Messages?!

The only reason I use it is because my friend uses Windows but has an iPhone. And using Skype would be even worse.

wake up apple , wake up apple , this is big issue, facetime shuts off other application volume while using facetime????? since Maverick came out we have this issue and apple done care even few update came already for Maverick but no one care about that issue..... thank you so much apple to care of your customer... such a shame....

I too have this problem. Has anyone found a solution? This needs to be addressed. When we facetime with someone, we should be allowed to change the sound of the facetime conversation as well as youtube, netflix, etc in the background. This is ridiculous.

yep, I'll give you a giant plus-one on this being a useless big-brother-trying-to-tell-me-how-things-should-be 'feature'. I'm a big boy... I can turn down the volume on whatever else might be playing at the time. Give me back that option please.

Assinine.

christianb

Any update on this? This problem is EXTREMELY frustrating. I own a large music studio that has Apple video chat software to teach distance students for years, but we are considering switching all our students to PC (over 10,000 students represented) because we can't play recordings for our students to hear their pieces.

First Apple Messages (formerly iChat) removed the presentation feature (so we can't play recordings through that). Then Facetime started "dimming" the sound on all other apps while a conference is in session.

Now we have to: 1) Send a recording file to students 2) Have them log off from facetime so it doesn't dim the sound 3) Have the student play the recording on their computer 4) Call us back after they've listened to it.

If this was intended to make the system MORE user-friendly, epic fail. PLEASE Apple. include an option to disable "sound dimming" during Facetime chats. We don't want to shift all our students over to PC, but we are struggling with this problem. Very anxious to see a resolution here!

This worked for me:

I have boom installed, but even with Boom on maximum I could hardly understand what the other side said.

During a FaceTime call I:

- Opened "System Preferences..." (left top in het Apple logo menu)

- Opened "Sound"

- In ¨Select a device for sound input" I have 2 options "Internal Speakers" and "BoomDevice". "BoomDevice" was selected, I clicked "Internal Speakers", but the selection would go back to "BoomDevice". However after clicking "Internal Speakers" a few times... the FaceTime sound suddenly was at normal level!

I hope this works for you too.

Exactly the same for me!

SOLVED!!!

Install Windows or Linux!