Live face swap on Mac

Wear another face on camera from any MacBook: the swap runs through Chrome, so there's nothing heavy to install.

Set it up in Mac

01
Let Chrome use the camera in macOS
Choose Apple menu → System Settings, click Privacy & Security in the sidebar, then Camera, and turn on Google Chrome. If it was off, quit and reopen Chrome afterwards.
02
Add Facecam and choose a face
Install the Facecam extension from the Chrome Web Store, sign in, choose Face swap under Your look and click a face, or upload a photo of the one you want.
03
Allow the call site
The first time a site such as Google Meet asks for your camera, Chrome shows a prompt at the top left. Allow it.
04
Select the camera in the call
Open the site's camera menu and choose “Facecam Virtual Camera”. Your MacBook's FaceTime HD camera light stays on: Facecam is reading it to make the swap.

Tested 2026-10-04 by Facecam team. Facecam extension 2.1.0 (test build) in Chromium 153.0.8010.12 on macOS 26.5.1 (Apple silicon), with Chromium's built-in test camera and microphone, not signed in to any app. On this Mac we opened the sites of Discord, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex, StreamYard, Riverside, YouTube, Kick, Twitch, VDO.Ninja and checked from inside each page that it listed and could open Facecam Virtual Camera. The Mac settings in the steps come from the vendor's help pages (see Sources).

If it doesn't work

Problem	Fix
Every site says no camera was found	Google Chrome is switched off under Privacy & Security → Camera. Turn it on and restart Chrome.
The camera works in FaceTime but not in Chrome	macOS allows the camera app by app. FaceTime being allowed says nothing about Chrome; check Chrome's own switch.
An iPhone shows up as the camera instead of the built-in one	Macs can use a nearby iPhone as a webcam. Pick the camera you want as your real one in Chrome's camera setting (Settings → Privacy and security → Site settings → Camera).
The fans spin up	Close other video tabs. The swap itself runs on our servers; what your Mac does is send and show video.

Mac apps and what to use instead

You want the swap in…	On a Mac, do this
Google Meet	Pick “Facecam Virtual Camera” in Meet in Chrome
Zoom	Join from the browser instead of the Zoom app
Teams	Choose Continue on this browser on the invite
Discord	Open discord.com in Chrome, not the Discord app
A Mac app that has no web version	Route it through OBS Virtual Camera

More about Mac

Why a Mac doesn't need a graphics card for this

Face swap apps you download do the AI work on your own machine, which is why most of them ask for a strong graphics card and are built for Windows first. Facecam sends your webcam video to its servers, swaps the face there and returns the frames to Chrome. A MacBook Air handles that the same way it handles a normal video call.

What we ran on a Mac

Our device check ran on an Apple silicon Mac: with Facecam loaded, the sites of Discord, Zoom, Teams, Webex and others each listed the Facecam camera and received video from it. It used a test camera, not a person, and didn't join real meetings; the Zoom page has our signed-in swap test.

Sources

Apple: control access to the camera on Mac — support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/mchlf6d108da (checked 2026-10-03)
Google Chrome Help: use your camera and microphone — support.google.com/chrome/answer/2693767 (checked 2026-10-03)

Questions

Does it work on Intel Macs?

It should: nothing in it depends on the chip, because the swap isn't computed on your Mac. Our own run was on Apple silicon.

Can I use it in FaceTime?

No. FaceTime on a Mac is an app, and apps can't see a camera that lives in Chrome.

Does it work in Safari?

No. Facecam is a Chrome extension.

Does macOS show that the camera is in use?

Yes. The green camera light and the menu bar indicator stay on while Chrome reads your webcam, as with any video call.

Other platforms

Updated 2026-10-03