FaceTime camera not receiving video

Things I have tried:

  • sudo killall VDCAssistant
  • sudo killall AppleCameraAssistant (shows no matching processes found)
  • Reset SMC
  • Reset NVRAM
  • Ran hardware test (shows no issues)

A few additional things to note: the camera´s green light stays on until I quite FaceTime or any other app that uses the camera (e.g. Photo Booth). Camera shows up fine under system report. The machine has never been opened.

Machine is a MacBook Air 2012 running High Sierra (latest version).

Finally, note that this may have started when I changed the system's language.


Test it using a new account (create one) or (after making a backup) on a fresh install. If that doesn’t work, the camera is defective. The USB interface and power indicator can still work with a broken video module, so the green light does not always indicate a working camera.