By Jason Snell
March 15, 2023 4:34 PM PT
Camo Studio 2 supports any webcam, including Continuity Camera
I love Continuity Camera, the feature introduced in macOS Ventura that lets you use an iPhone as a Mac webcam. Unfortunately, the creation of a systemwide feature often results in a third-party app being trampled, and that was the fate of Reincubate’s Camo Studio, which lets you… use your iPhone as a Mac webcam.
But as is often the case with a “Sherlocking“, Apple didn’t build a solution with all the features of Camo Studio. It kept it minimal—both Continuity Camera and the camera in the Apple Studio Display, use handful of toggles in Control Center to turn off basic modes like Center Stage, Portrait Mode, and Studio Light.
Camo Studio, on the other hand, offered all sorts of plenty of brightness, color, and zoom settings. And as of Wednesday, with the release of Camo Studio 2, the app also fully supports Continuity Camera, the Studio Display camera, and pretty much any other third-party webcam. (If you’ve been using lousy software to control your webcam, it might be time to replace it with Camo Studio.)
I’ve been using Camo Studio 2 for a few weeks and I’ve been relieved, frankly, to finally have proper control over my Continuity Camera and Studio Display cameras. The lighting in my office is weird, so I often need to adjust the color balance, and I’m never happy with the default zoom and options that Apple offers. With Camo Studio, I can drop an iPhone into a MagSafe mount and use it immediately without attaching a cable or launching an app on the iPhone.
Camo Studio has also picked up a bunch of new tricks. In addition to its classic zoom and image-adjustment settings, it’s got its own versions of Center Stage, Portrait Mode, and Studio Light. Reincubate claims its features are better and less processor intensive than Apple’s versions. (I did notice a few cases where Camo’s software seemed to better detect the difference between me and my background.) There’s also a really nice auto-pan mode that’s similar to Center Stage, but allows you to lock the zoom.
Other new features include a privacy blur, virtual green screen, support for 4K output, a bunch of LUT filters and presets, and a built-in overlay editor. And Camo Studio is still compatible with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, OBS, Chrome, Discord, Safari, FaceTime, and other video apps. (The output of Camo Studio appears as its own “virtual” camera.)
And for even more customizability, you can still download and run the Camo Studio app on your iPhone, which allows Camo to have access to settings that Continuity Camera doesn’t provide. With the app running, you can choose which lens to use, control focus, and more.
Camo Studio isn’t cheap—it’s $40/year or $80 for a lifetime unlock—but if you rely on a webcam for any part of your job and you want more control than what’s offered out of the box, it really delivers. If you’re interested, you can try it for free.
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