CamAppear

CamAppear adds a virtual camera to your Mac called CamAppear Camera. Choose it in Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams or FaceTime and you look completely normal, until you hold up a hand gesture and dissolve out of the picture. Do the gesture again to come back.

Don’t skip this: installing CamAppear doesn’t switch your calls over to it. In each video app, choose CamAppear Camera as the camera. Until you do, the call keeps showing your regular camera and gestures do nothing.

How it works

1. Pick CamAppear Camera as the camera in your video app.
2. Hold up your gesture for a second.
3. You dissolve, and the room behind you takes your place.

CamAppear keeps learning what the room looks like wherever you aren’t standing. Step out of view for a few seconds once and the effect becomes seamless.

Gestures

Each gesture has to be held for a moment (one second by default), so a stray wave won’t send you away. A hand resting on your chin, beard or cheek doesn’t count either, so thinking poses keep you on screen.

None of them clash with the reactions macOS adds to video calls (👍 👎 ✌️ 🫶). There’s also a Vanish now button in the menu bar.

Seven ways to go

• Pixel dissolve. You break up into blocks.
• Fade out. A smooth cross-fade into the empty room.
• Glass cloak. You become a person-shaped pane of glass that bends the room behind you. Almost invisible.
• Teleport beam. You glow under twinkling streaks of light and fade out between them.
• Scanner. A glowing line sweeps down and erases you as it goes.
• Glitch. Bands of you jump sideways in split colors, then cut out one by one.
• Turn to dust. You crumble into specks that drift away.

Each one plays in reverse when you come back.

Stays on your Mac

All the work happens on your Mac with Apple’s Vision framework. There’s no account, and CamAppear doesn’t send your camera, or anything else, anywhere.

Setting up

1. Unzip the download, move CamAppear to your Applications folder and open it. The camera only works from Applications.
2. macOS asks you to approve the camera. CamAppear’s setup window walks you through it: System Settings › General › Login Items & Extensions › Camera Extensions, then turn on CamAppear.
3. Allow camera access when asked.
4. Choose CamAppear Camera in your video app. This is the step that makes it work, and it’s easy to miss. The setup window shows you where, waits until your video app is using the camera, and names any video apps that need a restart to see it.