How to Make Calls from Yosemite the Geeky Way

Once you have installed Yosemite and iOS 8, you can finally make use of the Continuity and Handoff features that were showed off at WWDC this year. One of the most notable features is being able to make and receive calls from either a Mac or an iOS device. Because like it or not, phone calls are still a thing that happen, and sometimes they need to happen while you're at your Mac. So why not have some fun with it?

So kids, in the olden days you had to make a "phone call" from a device like this. No it didn't have Facebook.

There are a number of easier ways to make phone calls on your Mac, one of which is a utility called Continuity Keypad. There's also just opening Contacts and clicking on the phone handset by the phone number, which is effective but not very exciting. Or fun. So here's how to have some fun with it!

You can use something called a "URL scheme" which is the same idea that allows apps on iOS to "link" to other apps. Marshall Huss outlines a few ways to dial using URL schemes on his site, including using the address bar in Safari:

tel://18007672775<phone number="“18007672775" "=""> 

You can also type

open tel://17192662837

in Terminal and get the same result. Using Alfred you can type the same thing and get a phone call. But as Marshall points out, you may not carry any phone numbers in your brain anymore, so he offers a workflow for Alfred and outlines how to configure it. Perhaps now if you have to make one of those old-timey phone calls, it's slightly less drudgery. Or you can just put these in your Bag Of Tricks and pull them out to show off.