by Jason Snell
iPhone as single-app webcam
I use Reincubate’s Camo to turn my iPhone into a high-quality webcam for my Mac. Even an older iPhone’s camera is better than any webcam you’ve got, but mounting it can be fussy, and you have to unlock the phone and launch the Camo app every time you use it—which isn’t very convenient when the phone’s display is facing away from you and the whole thing is horizontal.
How to make that process easier? Developer Simon B. Støvring made it a one-click operation:
I will only be using the iPhone 6 Plus as a webcam and I will have it permanently mounted to my monitor, so to make it easier to launch the Camo app on the iPhone after the phone have been locked, I put the iPhone into Single App Mode using Apple Configurator and disabled the passcode on the phone. When in Single App Mode (sometimes also referred to as “kiosk mode”), the iPhone will only be able to launch a single app and the app will automatically be launched when the phone is unlocked.
If you’ve got an unused iPhone sitting around, this seems like a great second life for it.