How to Use Your iPhone As a Webcam for Facetime on Mac. Mac users universally almost decry the shoddy video quality of Mac’s built-in webcams, but an app that is called camo offers a potentially big upgrade.
The only thing is that you would require a Mac and an iPhone for it to work. Also, there is a free version, although it does lack a few core features, which we would be explaining in a bit.
How to Use Your iPhone As a Webcam for Facetime on Mac
Essentially, Camo would replace your Mac’s Camera using one of the cameras on your iPhone. On paper, it may look like something not too big of a deal – Mac cameras have had a resolution of at least 720p for well over a decade, with recent iMacs and MacBook Pros finally upgrading to 1080p webcams. Despite the webcams being notoriously grainy and flat, terrible in low light, and altogether underwhelming.
iPhone Cameras happen to be among the smartphone brands that possess, the best features, with models that include multiple lenses for wide-angle ultrawide and telephoto views. The difference is night and day – almost literally if lighting conditions are bad enough. If you happen to be an iPhone user that is not happy with Mac’s internal webcam, here is how to make use of Camo for the ultimate video calling upgrade.
Things that you need to use an iPhone as a Webcam on Mac
Well, unfortunately, Camo does not offer wireless connectivity currently, so you would be required to plug your iPhone into your Mac the old-fashioned way – with a lightning cable. After you have done that, launching and running the app would be relatively painless except for one minor speed bump: the camo Mac app is not entirely available in the Mac App Store, So you would be required to make sure your Mac settings would allow you install it. Below is How:
- First, launch the Settings app on your Mac
- Then click “Security and Privacy.”
- Under “Allow apps downloaded from,” be sure to select the bubble next to it “App Store and identified developers.”
- If it is not, Click on the lock in the lower-left corner and then enter your password, then click “unlock” and click the bubble right next to “App Store and identified developers.”
Once that has been taken out of the way, you would be required to download the Camo App for macOS and the Camo app for iOS. The iOS app works on more than just iPhones, by the way, so if you’ve got an iPod Touch or an iPad that has a decent camera that you would rather use, the steps are about the same for those devices also.
How to Make Use of iPhone as a WebCam for Mac FaceTime
Once Camo has been downloaded and installed right on both your iPhone and your Mac, the first time you run them, you would have to grant a slew of permissions, including those for the microphone and camera. Once that has been stated, you do not have to set an account or login in or anything – just fire both instances of the app and launch the app for the video calling platform that you are looking to use.
All thanks to the update that came recently, Camo now works with FaceTime, Safari, and QuickTime, as well as a lot of other platforms that include Zoom, Meet, Teams, Skype Slack, and Facebook Messenger.
You would like to have to dig into the settings of whatever one you choose and select Camo from the loss of available cameras – also you can choose to make use of your iPhone’s Microphone for audio on the call. Otherwise, you’ll connect to a call just as you would do any other time.
On the iOS end, the app actually doesn’t do that much as a gateway to your mobile device’s camera and microphone. The camo Mac app is where you would be making the adjustment to the settings not only which of your iPhone cameras to use but also a variety of other settings, that includes one that places an augmented-reality cat on your head.
