Direct download · Signed & notarized · Free, tip-supported
CamDeck floats images or plays video clips over your camera, organized into folders, runs a live lower-third bar, and applies real broadcast effects — then shows up as its own camera inside Zoom, Google Meet, or anything else that watches your Mac's camera. Built for live video podcasts, online gaming streams, and anyone who wants their webcam to look like a real broadcast instead of a plain video call.
Program guide
Everything you need to look good on Zoom, Google Meet, and most other Mac video call apps — image and video overlays, folders, QR code overlays, a live lower-third bar, and 20 real-time Mac camera effects.
Drag in images or video clips, paste an image URL, or hit ⌘V to drop in anything on your clipboard. Search-as-you-type filtering, drag to reorder, rename, reveal in Finder — click anything to make it live instantly.
Group images and videos into named folders — Commercials, Music Videos, whatever fits your show. Drag to reorder folders and items, right-click to move things between folders. "All Items" always shows the full library.
Send a video clip straight into the feed as its own camera output, with a draggable progress bar, an independent volume slider, and Play / Stop / Rewind controls. Switch back to your live camera with one click, or keep yourself in a picture-in-picture corner while the clip plays.
Right-click a folder of videos and choose Play as Channel — every clip plays in order and loops back to the first when it reaches the end, like a real TV channel. A Next button skips ahead manually, and an Up Next label shows what's coming.
Click a corner right on the preview to move the overlay there. Slide to resize live, click to punch in fullscreen and snap back. Frame color and border toggles, plus Fancy Mode — reflection, 3D tilt, highlight edge, and glow.
Type a URL, phone number, or any text at the bottom of the main window and click Show QR Code to drop it right into the floating-image slot — same corner, size, and Fancy Mode controls. It's one or the other with a regular image, never both. Save and recall snippets just like lower-third presets.
Type mid-show and it updates on air. Emoji picker, alignment, color, and a transparency slider right on the main window, saved preset phrases ("Bathroom Break"), and a design panel for scroll speed and text shadow. Long text auto-scrolls into a ticker.
Weather mode swaps in live conditions for your zip code. Now Playing mode shows your Spotify or Apple Music track. RSS mode tickers any news feed you point it at. Video Title mode shows the name of whatever clip is playing. One click swaps between them.
Point the lower third at a date instead of typed text — name the event, pick the date, and it counts down live ("Countdown to CamDeck's Beta Release: 15 days"). Great for launch dates, live show start times, or any on-air deadline.
Each one is a distinct filter with its own overlays and processing — not a color tint. VHS with tracking glitches, a thermal heat map, a NASA-style Mission Control HUD, genuine red/cyan 3D. Works on video overlays too. Full channel listing below.
Choose the exact physical webcam CamDeck captures when more than one is connected — and it plays nice with Zoom virtual backgrounds, with or without a green screen.
One button next to Start/Stop Camera Feed instantly cuts the entire output to a full-screen standby image — no video, effects, overlay, or lower third. The camera keeps running underneath, so switching back is just as instant.
Start the feed and a live broadcast timer runs next to the button, so you always know how long you've been on air.
A real macOS camera extension plus a small host app. Signed and notarized by Apple's process, downloaded straight from here, no account, no subscription, no App Store.
Click an image in the Preview panel to see it big before your viewers do, then hit Send to Air (⌘↩) to put it out. Turn on "Always preview images before sending them to air" and every pasted, downloaded, or dragged-in image gets staged for review instead of going out unseen — built for live shows where a mis-click used to be on screen instantly.
Right-click a folder and choose "Paste New Images Here" — every ⌘V files itself straight into that folder instead of landing loose, and it stays armed across launches. Set a default standby image once, then send it to air in one click from the Preview panel whenever you need a clean cutaway between segments.
Shrink CamDeck down to a small floating panel showing what's on air right now — the image, its name, the active camera effect, and whether the feed is running — so you can keep an eye on the show without the full window taking up screen space. It remembers wherever you last dragged it.
Channel listing
Every effect is real processing with its own burned-in graphics — timestamps, tracking glitches, telemetry, falling snow. Flip between them while the camera is running.
Black & white, heavy contrast, rolling scanlines, picture-tear, film grain.
Cool CCTV tone with a "CAM 01 / REC" readout and live timestamp.
Dozens of drawn flame tongues, white-hot at the base to dark red at the tip, with drifting embers and heat shimmer — framing the edges, not your face.
Color bleed, tracking glitches, "▶ PLAY" counter, a fake 12:00 clock, camcorder battery icon.
Real blue-to-red heat-map luminance mapping.
Four-layer snow driven by a shared wind gust, snow piling on the bottom edge, frosted corners, and chasing, twinkling string lights along the top.
Genuine red/cyan anaglyph processing — grab the paper glasses.
Green digital rain over a darkened silhouette, plus a full hacker HUD: decrypting readout, hex-dump scroll, and glitch bursts.
Red-on-black night vision with a tactical HUD — tracking brackets, target lock flash, ammo counter, motion scanner.
Washed color, fuzzy signal, a burned-in station ID and blinking LIVE timecode.
Inverted navy-and-cyan radiograph — a true photographic negative.
Moody black & white with deep blacks and a dark vignette.
Double vision, motion-trail shake, woozy color. Not for serious moments.
Dense green NASA telemetry: grid, tracking bracket, radar sweep, named satellite contacts drifting past.
Glowing flashback look — liquid ripple, pastel wash, floating orbs, sparkles.
Chunky 4-shade green Game Boy palette with a working arcade HUD — live climbing score and floating "+100."
Paranormal-investigation footage: EMF meter, case timer, radar sweep, and "ANOMALY DETECTED" alerts.
A condition-tinted glass HUD in the corner: live conditions, feels like, humidity, UV, rain chance, sunrise/sunset, and a 3-day forecast.
Monochrome night skyline with rolling blackouts, sweeping searchlights, a passing airliner, and pulsing rooftop antennas — warm yellow windows are the one spot of color.
Paper confetti tumbling and swaying across an otherwise barely-graded picture, catching the light as pieces flip edge-on.
Monitor wall
On air, anywhere
Whatever you're pointing a camera at, CamDeck makes the feed look like it belongs on a real broadcast.
Run a lower-third with your guest's name, switch to weather or Now Playing between segments, and cut to an Emergency Slide the instant a call drops or something goes sideways on air.
Play a Game Boy Arcade or CyberOps effect over your reaction cam, drop a QR code overlay for viewers to follow your channel, and keep a broadcast timer running so you always know how long you've been live.
Drop in a logo overlay, a clean lower-third with your name and title, and let it show up as an ordinary camera in Zoom or Google Meet — no one on the call needs to know how it's done.
Use Play as Channel to auto-run a folder of clips like a real TV channel, or play a single video as your camera output while you narrate live over the top.
Cue the intro
Tested with Zoom, QuickTime, and Google Meet. FaceTime blocks all virtual cameras — that one's on Apple.
Tested with macOS Tahoe 26.5.1 only. Not compatible with macOS betas yet.
It's signed and notarized, so it opens like any Mac app — no Gatekeeper warnings.
Frequently asked
Yes. CamDeck shows up as its own camera named "CamDeck" in Zoom's camera picker, complete with whatever overlay, lower third, and effect you have running.
Yes. CamDeck works with Google Meet, including a dedicated lower-third setting that adjusts the bar for Meet's camera cropping and zooming so it never gets clipped.
No. Apple restricts FaceTime from using any third-party virtual camera, so CamDeck cannot appear there. That's an Apple platform restriction, not a CamDeck limitation, and it applies to every virtual camera app on Mac.
Yes. CamDeck is completely free to download and use, with every feature unlocked. It's tip-supported through Buy Me a Coffee for anyone who wants to support development.
Yes. CamDeck is signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple's automated security scan, so it opens normally on macOS without any Gatekeeper warning, the same as any App Store app.
CamDeck includes 20 real-time camera effects that work in Zoom, Google Meet, and most other Mac video call apps: Old TV, Security Cam, Flame, VHS, Thermal, Holiday Mode, 3D, CyberOps, NightOps, Local Cable, X-Ray, Noir, Drunk Mode, Mission Control, Dream Sequence, Game Boy Arcade, Ghost Hunter, Weather Report, City Life, and Confetti.
Yes. CamDeck was built backstage for a live weekly video podcast, so lower thirds, guest names, and quick effect switches are the whole point. It works just as well for gaming streams — run an effect over your reaction cam, drop a QR code for viewers to follow your channel, and use the broadcast timer to track how long you've been live.
No. We don't build Windows software at this time. CamDeck is a native Mac app built on macOS's camera extension framework, currently tested on macOS Tahoe 26.5.1.
See the full FAQ, including why CamDeck isn't on the App Store →
Station history
Same philosophy as If Then Software back in the AppleScript era — some of those tools made it into Macworld, MacAddict, and MacUser: build something useful, ship it directly, and let people support it if it earns a place in their workflow.
A tip of the hat to CamTwist, the discontinued Mac app whose simplicity helped inspire this one. CamDeck was custom-built to solve a real problem backstage on a live weekly broadcast, and shared because we loved it too much to keep it to ourselves.
Use it if it helps. Tip if you can. Keep the software alive if it keeps earning its spot.
CamDeck is free to run forever, tip-supported by people who use it. If it makes your stream, call, or recording better, tip whatever feels right.