Webcam not working on Mac
Last updated: 2026-08-22
Macs have one diagnostic advantage no other platform offers, and it settles half the cases before you change a single setting.
Run the webcam test above and look at the green light beside the camera.
Green light on, picture black — the camera is powered and streaming. The fault is elsewhere. Skip to step 2. No green light — nothing is reaching the camera. Start at step 1.
That light is wired to the camera’s power at the hardware level. macOS cannot turn the camera on without it, and no software can turn it off. If it is lit, the camera is working.
1. Your iPhone probably took the slot
On Ventura and later, Continuity Camera lets a nearby iPhone act as your Mac’s camera, and it switches automatically. If your phone is face-down on the desk, the app gets a black frame from a camera pointed at a table.
Check the app’s own camera picker. In the test above, use the camera selector. In FaceTime, look under Video in the menu bar. In Zoom, check Settings → Video.
If an iPhone is listed and selected, that is your answer. Choose the built-in camera instead.
To stop it happening, on the iPhone open Settings → General → AirPlay & Continuity and turn off Continuity Camera.
This is the single most common cause on a modern Mac, and it produces exactly the symptom people describe as “my camera stopped working after an update.”
2. Another app is holding it
macOS gives the camera to one application at a time. A second one usually gets a black frame rather than a clear error.
Fully quit FaceTime, Zoom, Teams, Photo Booth, Discord, and OBS. Closing the window is not enough — press Cmd + Q on each, or right-click the Dock icon and choose Quit.
If you are not sure what is holding it, the green light tells you. If it stays on after you have quit everything you can see, something is still running.
3. Permissions, and the restart rule
System Settings → Privacy & Security → Camera. Enable your browser or app.
Then the part that is different from Windows: macOS does not apply the change to a running app. Toggle the switch, then quit the app completely with Cmd + Q and reopen it. Until you do, it will keep being refused while the setting looks correct.
For websites, browser permission is separate. Click the camera icon in the address bar, allow, and reload.
When the toggle does nothing
If permission is granted, the app has been restarted, and it is still blocked, macOS’s permission database is stuck. Reset it in Terminal:
tccutil reset CameraThat clears camera permissions for every app, so each will ask again. For a single app, add its bundle ID:
tccutil reset Camera com.google.ChromeQuit and reopen the app afterwards.
4. Screen Time restrictions
System Settings → Screen Time → Content & Privacy → App Restrictions. If camera access is restricted here, the Privacy panel looks normal but silently refuses.
Common on machines managed by an employer, and on any Mac set up with parental controls at some point.
5. Restart the camera process
If the green light never comes on and permissions are correct, the camera assistant process may have hung. Restarting it is faster than rebooting and safe to do.
In Terminal:
sudo killall VDCAssistantEnter your password when asked. The process restarts automatically. Reopen the app and try again.
On Apple Silicon this process is sometimes named differently, and the command may report that nothing was found. That is not an error — it means the process was not running, and a reboot is the next step.
What does not apply to Apple Silicon
Plenty of pages recommend resetting the SMC or NVRAM to fix camera faults.
M1 and later Macs have no SMC, and NVRAM is handled automatically at boot. Those key combinations do nothing on modern hardware. Any guide telling you to hold keys at startup on an M-series Mac was written for Intel machines and never updated.
Before assuming hardware failure
Check the lighting. A Mac camera facing a bright window with you in front of it produces something close to a silhouette, and the small sensor handles backlighting poorly. Put a light in front of your face and look again.
If the green light never comes on in any application, permissions are clean, and a restart changes nothing, it is a hardware fault. Book a Genius Bar appointment rather than opening the machine — the camera module sits behind the display assembly on every modern MacBook and is not user-serviceable.