Camera mode
How the camera effects work and what stays private.
Camera is one of the savers in Studio. It renders your live camera as animated characters, with a Camera Color palette and a Mirror camera toggle. You choose the camera in Studio, and IdleScreen recovers automatically after permission or device changes.
Turning it on
Camera access is requested only when you explicitly choose a camera effect, or from the optional third step of setup. Studio's camera card tells you where you stand:
| State | What the card says | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Not asked yet | Allow camera access | Click Allow camera access. macOS shows its prompt. |
| Denied | Camera access is off | Turn it on in Camera privacy settings. |
| Restricted | Camera access is restricted | A policy on this Mac blocks the camera. Ask whoever manages it. |
| Allowed but failing | The camera isn't working | Open Status to check it. |
If setup isn't finished, the card asks you to finish setup first. The preview badge in Studio reads Camera Live, Camera Starting, Camera Unavailable or Camera Checking.
If a camera frame is unavailable or stale, the renderer falls back to a procedural source.
Privacy
- Camera frames stay inside the local App Group mailbox. They are not sent over the network, written to logs or retained as test evidence.
- A separately signed camera agent is the only process allowed to open the camera.
- Capture starts when the first valid consumer asks for it and stops after the last one ends.
- Diagnostics never contain camera pixels.
See Architecture for the lease and mailbox design, and Security and privacy.
Granting and revoking permission, camera contention with another app and disconnecting the selected camera are on the not verified on a device list.