cannot turn on iphone cellular calls error

OK, now this is just bizarre. I decided to logout from my Apple ID altogether. I signed out of iCloud and FaceTime on my iMac, and from iCloud and FaceTime on my iPhone, as well as all additional apps that I could locate which were using the ID.

Next, I logged in to iCloud, and FaceTime on both iMac and iPhone using my wife's Apple ID. Voila! FaceTime cellular calls worked on the iMac! I was able to complete a call from her iPhone to mine, and accept it on the iMac. Beautiful.

So then I began the process of logging out from her Apple ID and logging back in on mine, in the hopes that the process had somehow reset some hanging point that was preventing the feature from working before. Strangely, FaceTime on the iMac would not allow me to sign in on my own Apple ID. But after I restarted the iMac, FaceTime accepted my Apple ID. Only this time, when I opened "FaceTime Preferences" I had NO OPTION FOR FACETIME CELLULAR CALLS!" Unbelievable. What the heck is going on?

Just tried reinstalling Yosemite. Guess what, it still doesn't work. And I still no longer have the option on iMac FaceTime to receive iPhone cellular calls. What gives?

This sounds very annoying - I too have wasted many hours on this issue, but I think our problems are not connected. My sole gripe with iOS8.1 is that I can no longer select just one contact address for FaceTime IF I want to use 'iPhone Mobile Calls'. This is also called 'iPhone Cellular Calls' depending on your location. Prior to upgrading this was possible and in fact since the start of iMessage and FaceTime, I've always, like many others I'm sure, preferred to keep things simple and have just ONE CONTACT ADDRESS - this being my mobile (cellular) number and NOT MY EMAIL ADDRESS.

I find it difficult to believe this is 'expected behaviour', and that Apple have removed the option of having just one contact address for FaceTime, when for iMessage it remains possible. Talk about 'continuity failures' or what?!

Finger's crossed there is some honestly revealed in the coming days and they realise their error and correct it.

@DirtyDawg - are you getting the 'FaceTime and iCloud must be signed in to the same Apple ID to use iPhone Cellular Calls' error message?

Did you know ALL users of iOS8 get 30 days free support upon upgrading, even if the warranty has expired. Worth calling Apple Support for sure on this one if you can't resolve it yourself.

Hi Vishal. That's good news about the tech-support connected with iOS 8. I'll be taking advantage of that. In answer to your question, yes and no. I was receiving the error message before the option to choose iPhone cellular calls completely disappeared. Now of course there's no error message because I can't make that selection.

Further to this issue, now I'm also seeing that SMS relay needs 'rebooting' every few days, which is annoying as I have become use to sending messages to EVERYONE from my computer now, and not discriminating against those who don't have iMessage. But I restart it but turning SMS relay OFF and then back ON, enter the CODE and everyone is HAPPY again, until the time next it decides to fail. Come on APPLE - sort it out. The magic of 'it just works' is fading FAST!

Agreed. Just experienced that myself this morning. In addition, getting error messages that some iMessage enabled phone numbers (which I know to be enabled) are not enabled; my "Utilities" folder in the "Applications" folder was randomly renamed to my system password padded with "w"s; I came in a bit ago and found an error message that an external HDD had been "incorrectly removed" and that I should properly eject it next time (funny thing is nothing of the sort actually happened); and as I write, iPhoto, iMovie, Keynote, and Numbers are being restored to 10/24/13 versions (without my consent). I have no earthly idea what's going on with this crazy machine now, but every time I touch it since the Yosemite update, something irrational happens. I am REALLY not happy with Apple over this one. Things were running fine under Mavericks, but they enticed me with the promised new features, (very few of which are actually functional), and now I have an iMac that is supposed to "just work," but is in fact less reliable than my worst Windows PC ever was. Thanks Apple.

Okay, so I fixed my issue... Turns out you need an iCloud account to use the phone calls on Mac feature. And have to have your App Store login as the iCloud email address.

Hope this maybe helps someone!!

Success! Fully an hour and a half of Apple Support later and we have my particular issue resolved. Here's the rundown:

As I stated earlier in this thread, all of the specified parameters were exactly as they should have been -- iOS 8.1, OS 10.10, both devices logged in on the same Apple ID, connected to the same WiFi network, "iPhone Cellular Calls" option marked on both phone and iMac, etc. Yet I got the same error message as the OP, indicating that both devices were not logged in on the same Apple ID.

My own troubleshooting led me to try logging out of my Apple ID on all devices and logging in on my wife's. I was successful in activating the iPhone Cellular Calls function on my iMac using her Apple ID. Encouraged by that, I logged out of her Apple ID and logged back in on mine, hoping that the issue had been resolved. It hadn't. Then after a bit more back and forth, logging out of FaceTime and back in, hoping to reset things by this, the option to activate iPhone Cellular Calls on my iMac completely disappeared. That's where things stood at the outset of today's support session.

After going through the algorithms to ensure that all of the above criteria were met, the OS X support tech handed me over to an iOS support tech who pretty quickly resolved the issue. We created a temporary user on the iMac and simply opened FaceTime and FaceTime Preferences under that user. The iPhone Cellular Calls option was available in FaceTime Preferences, just as it had been before under my user name, and in fact, was already checked. Satisfied with this, we logged off the temporary user and back in to my user. Voila! The option had returned and was already checked. Testing confirmed that I am now able both to initiate and receive iPhone calls from the iMac, just as promised in all the iOS 8/OSX Yosemite brag pages.

According to the iOS support tech, opening the temporary user allowed the iMac to reset the "preferences" file to the defaults, then my own user profile picked up those defaults again. Whatever the technical justifications, this worked for me, and maybe will for someone else as well. The last thing was to delete the now unnecessary temporary user and restart the iMac. Thankfully, everything still functions just as it should.

@Vishal I was able to set my FaceTime preferences to only my cell number and complete a call from my wife's phone to my iMac. Don't know if this is a regional difference, or some issue with your particular configuration, but just wanted you to know that for me, at least, it is possible to do what I understood you to say you wanted to do.

Regards!

I had the same exact issue. Tried everything with no luck. For the longest time I was even unable to toggle on using my Apple ID for calls. This may have been dumb luck but plugging my phone into my mac directly has allowed me to toggle this on AND uncheck my Apple ID leaving only my phone number. Hope this helps!

After trying many methods on this thread to no avail, I was finally able to enable this feature:

In Settings->FaceTime, Choose the Apple ID email address as Caller ID

Then enable iPhone Cellular Calls

Set Caller ID back to your choice (iPhone Cellular Calls switch still stays on!)

Hope this works for you!

This solved my problem, thanks!

Turns out that you must indeed turn on an email address both in the FaceTime settings on your Mac and your iPhone. I had turned off any email address for sending and receiving calls or text messages, because I wanted to make sure that all calls and text will be sent and received with my phone number connected to it. Just to make sure I won't confuse people. But unfortunately just a phone number is not enough to make sending and receiving calls from the mac work.

Now, it works like a charm!

Yes but that means with iOS8.1, Apple has removed the ability for users to decide on which address they'd like to be contacted, which was not the case in iOS8.0.1 or .2 - and some users are still reporting, using 8.1 they are in fact able to decide which address they wish to use. I've always used just one address for iMessage and FaceTime, and did so for iPhone Cellular Calls prior to upgrading to 8.1.

Whilst this is now working for you, I do think the solution is far from elegant and rather 'un-Apple'.

Partly true: on my iPhone in Settings → FaceTime, under Caller ID, I can leave just the phone number checked and all e-mail addresses Unchecked. So, to make Mac-calls via cellular network possible, I only need to check an email address for incoming calls. So everyone will always see my phone number when I call them, just as I wanted.

I just need to not advertise which e-mail address I connected to FaceTime and no one will be confused. :-)

I guess there're technical reasons for this.

@Marc van Maastricht, as posted above, once I enabled iPhone Cellular calls on my iMac, I was able to go back in and uncheck the email address. If you haven't tried this, see if it will work for you.

After spending 2 hrs online researching solutions and none of them worked even the ones indicated in the apple support communities site. I called up apple and spoke with a L2.

We discovered that by creating a test user it solved the issue. So we went back to the original user deleted 1/2 of the plist then reboot then replaced the plist back. Deleted the 2nd 1/2 of the plist files and reboot. It worked after that ..you loose some of your customized settings but it wan't a huge deal. make suer you divide your plist in two different groups.