X starts giving non-paying users the ability to make audio and video calls

X is slowly rolling out audio and video calling to users who don’t pay for its premium subscription service, formerly known as Twitter Blue. Enrique Barragan, the company’s engineer, shared the news on the platform. The company originally rolled out the feature to iOS users last year, giving paying subscribers the option to call other people through the app, and was a step toward making X the “everything” app that Elon Musk wants it to be. Earlier this year, the opportunity made its way to Android devicesbut the ability to make calls remained limited to Premium subscribers only.

By the end of January, Musk said X will make audio-video calls available to everyone as soon as the company is sure they’re stable. We are still required to subscribe to X Premium to be able to make calls when we tap the phone icon in DMs, but those who get the update will be able to make calls even if they are not paying subscribers. The official one X support page as the feature now says that all accounts can make and receive calls, even though both parties must have been in contact via direct messages at least once. In the past it only said “Premium subscribers have the ability to make audio and video calls”.

In addition to announcing the rollout of the feature, Barragan revealed that users will now be able to receive calls from anyone in the app if they want to. Audio and video calls were automatically turned on for us when we checked our DMs settings menu, configured so that we could (thankfully) only receive calls from people we follow. We now see the “All” option there, ready to be selected by the most intrepid X users.