Absolutely. Portal is the Hub of our home, in the dining room, but we can't drop in to the other rooms in the house, quite frustrating. Considering denoting the Portal to a separate room for video calls only, and getting an Echo show.

When will autoanswer be available?

And on top of that you’ve a year to fix it....AMAZING!!!!!

Have I just purchased a ****. The exact feature I wanted it doesn’t have. It was advertised with all kinds of family situations, surely one of which is the person at the other end doesn’t have the physical ability to answer. Come on! For goodness sake. This is the easiest software fix on the planet. There will be 1000s of people affected by disability of some manner that would need to use this feature. Madness...

There needs to be an easy way to toggle between the Portal and TV. My 92 friend with bad eyesight is struggling with this

Like Sheila, I too want to be able to use the portal TV device to check in on my elderly mother. I would hope that the great minds at Facebook would recognize the huge opportunity here and build in Auto-answer functionality and any number of other automatic features that would make the device really useful in that particular situation. It could be a niche for Facebook, since the large TV image is so helpful to an elderly person who may have reduced eyesight.

Auto-answer functionality is seriously needed. Without it, the Portal TV device is very much inferior to Amazon Alexa

This feature is a must.

Yes! The ability to link up and start a video chat with someone else remotely is the only reason I am thinking about buying any of these types of gadgets designed for video chatting. I really want to be able to check on my elderly mother who lives alone, is not at all 'tech savvy', and has also fallen a couple of times recently.

I had a long talk with a tech support representative last night and we discussed this possible feature. I was told that there were technical issues which are keeping this from being a feature and there were no plans on creating the feature. I was also told that using the feedback on the portal for sending in request might get more attention than posting here.

So I would suggest that everyone go to settings on their Portal and press HELP and then press the FEEDBACK selection and type in the request for "drop in" along with the reason. Maybe a big write in campaign will make this very important feature happen.

Please add an auto answer option for those who Portal with elderly relatives. I have a huge cue card in front of my parents Portal that says "Hey Portal Answer" but sometimes they just don't figure it out.They will eventually not be able to answer on their own as they age and the Portal will be of no use.

I went to buy a portal today and realized there was no auto answer option. I must have this feature in order to purchase.

This is a make or break feature for me to buy the FB Portal. I need this for my Aged Uncle who happens to be blind. Please add auto answer functionality.

I bought this to talk to my parents and aunties, aging 70 to 80 yrs old. They have a hard time to pick up my call, they forgot what to press and got confused. Can we have this auto-answer/accept feature please? If Alexa Echo can do it, why can't portal? Maybe put a "Trusted" contact that are only allowed to do a "Drop-in" video call

Auto answer would be very valuable and should be an option. As an option, those who don't want it can not enable it and those who do can turn it on. I'm trying to determine whether to keep my echo show's or my portal's right now and this is actually a major determining factor for me. I would keep portal, hands down if it already had this option.

After adding this feature, an enhancement would be: add the ability to choose who (which accounts) can "drop in".

Please ! Add auto Answer

I would also love this feature. For older family member who have dementia or suffered strokes. They cant answer but they know when we are talking to them.
This would be an amazing feature.

On the Echo, you need to give permission to who can drop in. Without permission no one can drop in. I would expect this same security feature to be on the Portal.

Even when you give an individual permission to drop in on the Echo, it is preceeded by a tone and on the Echo Show, your video screen shows the person who is dropping in before that person gets a clear video from your camera. So there is enough time to cover the camera if necessary.

Some of us don't like the idea of Alexa 'dropping in' and listening to us when we haven't had to 'accept' the call and don't realise it has connected. Having Portal dropping in unanounced and seeing who is there and what they are doing could be worse. However, I agree that it would be useful checking up on elderley relatives .........

Yes this is need so badly for users with Dementia or similar disorders.