Healthdirect Australia Help Center

    Using Safari on Mac and iOS devices

    Who - all Video Call users of Mac and iOS devices using Safari

    What you need to know if you are using Safari 12+

    You are able to use Safari 12+ on both Mac and iOS devices to conduct in-browser calls.

    What you need to know:

    • Video Call requires Safari 12 (or higher) - older versions of Safari do not support some of the technology that is required to conduct in-browser calls. If you've upgraded to iOS 12 (for iOS devices), or OSX Mojave (for Mac) then you'll already have Safari 12. If you don't, you can easily update your system using the App Store.

    Limitations and known issues

    Limited support

    • Adjusting call quality settings - some restrictions to the device capture systems in Safari mean that the full features of call quality adjustments are not available. In particular, the Bandwidth Restricted setting that allows for very low quality video cannot support the low resolution required. Instead, in Safari, this setting uses the same quality settings as Low Quality, but with a reduced frame rate.  If you are using this quality setting, the video may appear choppy.

    Not yet supported

    • Adding screenshares -  Safari does not yet support the underlying technology that allows screensharing to take place, so you can't add a screenshare from Safari. Safari users can still receive screenshares however. 
    • Audio call recording - our audio call recording system is still being updated to support Safari. 
    • Selecting a different audio output device  - Safari does not currently support the ability to output audio to different audio device. In the interim, you should use the native support in OSX and iOS for choosing your audio output.

    Technical issues

    • Firefox 62 or lower shows a frozen video from a Safari user - Firefox 62 and lower currently has an issue with decoding video streams from Safari that results in a frozen video after a second of playback. To identify this issue, Firefox users will be presented with a notification indicating the problem where the Safari users' video would normally appear. Audio is not affected. You will not experience these issues with Firefox 68 or above.
    • Firefox 63+ shows an extremely choppy video from a Safari user - a continuation from the prior issue, Mozilla has partially fixed the decoder issue that was in Firefox 62 so it no longer freezes completely. However, the video decoder is operating at substantially reduced efficiency, resulting in a video playback of approximately one frame per second (FPS), resulting in a very choppy video playback. Audio is not affected. You will not experience these issues with Firefox 68 or above.
    • Device switching taking longer -  switching your camera/microphones may take a little while longer than with other supported platforms due to Safari's media capture implementation. 

    Can’t find what you’re looking for?

    Email support

    or speak to the Video Call team on 1800 580 771

    Internal Content