My husband was recently transferred to a facility that uses a specific video kiosk system for visits. We tried our first call yesterday and the lag was unbearable—the audio was five seconds behind the video, and it kept freezing. I have fiber internet at home, so I know my connection is good. Is it better to use the mobile app or the desktop website? I don't want to waste money on credits for calls that don't work.

Always use the desktop site with a wired ethernet connection if you can. The mobile apps are notoriously buggy and rely heavily on your phone's fluctuating signal. Also, close every other tab on your browser; these visitation platforms are huge resource hogs and will crash if your RAM is full.

I went through this frustration last year when my brother was in the county. We had constant "connection failed" errors despite having perfect WiFi. I spent a long time reading through HomeWAV reviews to see if it was a widespread server issue or just my laptop. It turns out that a lot of these platforms have specific browser incompatibilities, like they work fine on Chrome but glitch out completely on Safari. Once I switched to a Windows laptop and lowered my webcam resolution manually in the settings, the stream smoothed out significantly. It’s annoying to troubleshoot, but tweaking your local settings can help.