pascalandy / obs-mac-virtualcam

Creates a virtual webcam device from the output of OBS. Especially useful for streaming smooth, composited video into Zoom, Hangouts, Jitsi etc. Like obs-virtualcam but for macOS.

OBS (macOS) Virtual Camera 🎥

Creates a virtual webcam device from the output of OBS Studio. Especially useful for streaming smooth, composited video into Zoom, Hangouts, Jitsi etc. Like CatxFish/obs-virtual-cam but for macOS.

This code was spun out of this OBS Project RFC which was itself spun out of this issue from @tobi. The goal is for this (or something with equivalent functionality) to eventually be merged into the core OBS codebase 🤞.

Donating 💸

Consider sending some money in the direction of the OBS Project via Open Collective, Patreon, or PayPal. Obviously, without OBS, this plugin would not be very useful! Hugh "Jim" Bailey is OBS Project's full-time lead developer and project maintainer. This money helps him continue to work on OBS!

If, after you donate to the OBS Project, you also want to send some cash my way that's appreciated too! Feel free to Buy Me a Coffee or PayPal me.

Known Issues

• The virtual camera doesn't work with all programs due to a combination of application restrictions and OS restrictions (for built-in apps like Facetime). Check out COMPATIBILITY.md to see if your app is supported. Please edit that file and submit a Pull Request if you try other software that we should include in that list.
• OBS needs to be restarted after changing resolutions for the Virtual Camera to work. (#83)

Installing

• Download and install the latest version of OBS from the official website.
• Download the latest .pkg installer on the Releases page
• Run the .pkg installer (entering your password when required)
• If you're already running OBS, make sure to restart it.
• Restart any app that was running during the installation process that is supposed to pick up the camera.
• To start the virtual camera, go (in OBS) to Tools→Start Virtual Camera.

Your OBS video should now show up in the target app!

Uninstalling

You can easily uninstall this plugin by deleting the OBS plugin (in /Library/Application\ Support/obs-studio/plugins/) and the DAL plugin (in /Library/CoreMediaIO/Plug-Ins/DAL/).

sudo rm -rf /Library/CoreMediaIO/Plug-Ins/DAL/obs-mac-virtualcam.plugin
sudo rm -rf /Library/Application\ Support/obs-studio/plugins/obs-mac-virtualcam

Discussion / Support

The official place for discussion and chat related to this plugin is in the #plugins-and-tools channel in the OBS Studio Discord. For questions or troubleshooting, ping @gxalpha#3486 and attach the OBS log, screenshots, and/or crash logs (from Console.app).

Reporting Issues / Bugs / Improvements

🚀 Wonder How to contribute? Have look at our notes for contributors. There are ways non-technical or minimally-technical folks can contribute too!

This plugin is still very much a work in progress. If you are having an issue there's a good chance someone has already run into the same thing. Please search through the issues before reporting a new one.

Also, make sure you're running the most recent version of OBS. We're only officially supporting the most recent version of OBS at any given time.

If you still believe you have found an unreported issue related to this plugin, please open an issue! When you do, include any relevant terminal log, Console.app log, crash log, screen recording and/or screenshots. The more information you can provide, the better!

Development

Please help me make this thing not janky! See the DEVELOPING.md file for build instructions and tips & tricks for developing.

License

As the goal of this repo is to eventually get merged into obsproject/obs-studio (or die because someone made a better implementation), the license for this code mirrors the GPLv2 license for that project.