How to Change Your Face on Zoom

Search this and you'll find a lot of advice to install Snap Camera. Snap shut it down on January 25, 2023. What's left is Zoom's own effects, which only decorate your face, and face swap, which replaces it.

What can Zoom's own effects do to your face?

All of them sit in the desktop app under Settings, then Background & effects. Here's what each one changes, in Zoom's own words where it has them.

Two catches. An account admin has to turn avatars on, and the realistic and stylised avatars need Zoom 7.0.0 or newer plus an NVIDIA RTX graphics card on Windows or an M3 Pro chip or better on a Mac. And none of these make you look like someone else: you get your own face with extras, or a cartoon.

How do you look like a different person on Zoom?

That's what live face swap is for. It finds your face in every camera frame and paints a different face over it, following your expressions, while your hair, clothes and room stay as they are. With Facecam it works like this: you upload any face you like, or pick a built-in one, and Chrome gets an extra camera called Facecam Virtual Camera. In the Zoom web app you pick that camera like any webcam.

Look at the right-hand panel. The uploaded woman's face shape, eyes, skin tone and age came through. Her silver pixie cut didn't: the swap kept the camera's curly hair, the earring and the jumper. That's how face swap works, so the face you pick matters.

1. 01

   Pick or upload your face

   On the Live Face Swap page, click the upload square next to Face and choose a photo, then Save face. It's saved only in that browser. A clear, front-facing, evenly lit photo works best.

2. 02

   Check it on yourself first

   Start your camera and click Start swap. The Side by side button shows your camera next to the swapped picture, so you can see what the call will see.

3. 03

   Join Zoom from the browser

   Open the meeting link in Chrome and choose Join from browser. The Zoom desktop app can't see Facecam's camera, because it only exists inside Chrome.

4. 04

   Choose Facecam Virtual Camera

   On Zoom's join screen, open the camera menu next to Stop Video and pick it. The Face swap for Zoom page has screenshots of each step in Zoom.

How long does it take to start?

In our test the first swapped frame appeared 20.4 seconds after we clicked Start swap. When we started a second session a minute later, it took 3.8 seconds. The difference is the server: the first session waits for a graphics card to get ready. So start the swap a minute before the meeting, not as you click Join. Until it's ready, the call sees your normal camera.

Why doesn't the swap change my hair?

A face swap replaces the face: roughly eyebrows to chin. Hair, ears, beard stubble and anything below the jaw come from your camera. We ran the same uploaded face on a man with short hair and stubble to show it.

• Match the hair. A face whose hair looks like yours gives the most natural result. If it can't, a hat or hood can hide the mismatch.
• Face the light. A lamp in front of you, not behind, gives the swap a clear face to work with. The free Webcam Effects Bright look lifts a dim camera without changing who you are.
• Keep your face in frame. A hand over your face or a sharp turn to the side can make the swap flicker back to your own face for a moment.

Which option should you use?

What didn't we test?

We didn't install the Zoom desktop app, so its filters, Studio Effects and avatars are described from Zoom's support pages, not tried. Our swap tests ran on recorded clips of computer-made people, not a live person moving around, and the start times come from two short sessions on one afternoon. Zoom can also block joining from the browser for a meeting; when the host turns that off, Facecam can't be used in that meeting.