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@Ryanb58
Created November 17, 2020 14:31
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Who Is Using Your Webcam?

Recently I've noticed a green dot next to my webcam staying on beyond my Google Hangout/Zoom meetings. This is obviously a problem so I've set out to find the solution.

Ends up it is pretty simple. All you need is lsof and grep.

To find out if your built-in webcam is being used:

lsof | grep Camera

Although that doesn't catch all the cases. Some apps use something called VDC to access the webcam.

lsof | grep VDC

For me the VDC command was the on that finally worked. Example Output:

~/ » lsof | grep VDC                                                                                                                                       1 ↵ tbrazelton@drpepper

Google      343 tbrazelton  txt       REG                1,5       424176 1152921500312556127 /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreMediaIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources/VDC.plugin/Contents/MacOS/VDC
Slack       355 tbrazelton  txt       REG                1,5       424176 1152921500312556127 /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreMediaIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources/VDC.plugin/Contents/MacOS/VDC
FaceTime  13975 tbrazelton  txt       REG                1,5       424176 1152921500312556127 /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreMediaIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources/VDC.plugin/Contents/MacOS/VDC
avconfere 13977 tbrazelton  txt       REG                1,5       424176 1152921500312556127 /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreMediaIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources/VDC.plugin/Contents/MacOS/VDC

When I shut off FaceTime the green light went away and so did my sticky note.

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