How everything works.

1. Install LoopCam

Drag LoopCam.app into your /Applications folder and open it. The control bar appears floating on your screen, and a LoopCam icon lands in the menu bar.

2. The camera extension

The "camera" other apps see is a CoreMediaIO camera extension that LoopCam registers with macOS. It runs sandboxed, managed by the system, and it is the reason Zoom can list "LoopCam" next to your real webcam. Installing it is a one-time, three-step dance:

1. Click Install in the setup checklist on the control bar (or in gear → Virtual Camera Extension).
2. Approve it in System Settings. macOS asks for your permission the first time. LoopCam opens the right pane for you: look for a message about system software from "LoopCam" or "Kalkidan Bekalu Aleme" and click Allow. On macOS 15 and later this lives under System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions → Camera Extensions.
3. Pick "LoopCam" as the camera in Zoom, Meet, Teams, OBS, or anything else with a camera picker.

The checklist on the control bar tracks each step and turns green as you go. When the status dot at the bottom of the bar is green, frames are verifiably flowing into the virtual camera.

Some macOS versions require a reboot after the first approval. LoopCam tells you when that is the case; everything works after the restart.

3. Your first loop

1. With the meeting seeing "LoopCam" and you in Live mode, click the red record button (or press ⇧⌘R).
2. Be normal for ten seconds. Nod, sip coffee, glance at a second monitor.
3. Click record again to stop. The loop takes over automatically, entering on the exact frame you just recorded and playing in reverse first, so there is no visible cut.

The Live / Loop pills switch between your real camera and the loop at any time. You can also load any video file as the loop source with the film button PRO.

Loop styles live in gear → Looping: Start over plays to the end and jumps back; Back & forth plays forward then backward, which hides the loop seam entirely.

Recording a loop that holds up

• Stay mostly still. Small idle motion reads as natural: slow nods, blinking, a glance at a second monitor. Big gestures, leaning, or hands entering the frame make the loop seam easy to spot. Boring recordings make the best loops.
• Avoid one-time events. A sip, a stretch, or a passing person behind you repeats every cycle. Ten calm seconds beats thirty eventful ones.
• Keep the scene constant. Changing light (a window, a TV flickering in the background) drifts between the loop and reality, and between loop cycles.
• Went live? Record fresh before looping again. Coming back from a loop, it is tempting to switch straight back to the clip you already have. Don't: you have moved since it was recorded, so the cut back to it lands with a visible jump. Recording a new ten seconds right now costs nothing, and the seamless reverse entry starts the new loop on the exact frame you are in.

4. Hold to bypass

While looping, hold ⌃ Control (configurable). Three things happen:

1. A safety window opens showing your live camera. The meeting still sees the loop.
2. A ghost of the exact frame the loop will pause on is overlaid, so you can align your posture before the switch.
3. A countdown runs. When it hits zero you are live. Release the key and the loop resumes from the same frame it paused on.

Press ⇥ Tab during a bypass to commit and stay live. The gesture, key, hold duration, and ghost opacity are adjustable in gear → Hold to Bypass PRO.

5. Camera-off cards

The video button doesn't broadcast a black rectangle. It broadcasts a proper avatar card with your initials, or your photo PRO, styled to blend into Teams, Meet, or Zoom PRO. Set your display name and picture in gear → Video Off Card.

6. Audio & the LoopCam Mic

Audio in LoopCam is two separate things, and keeping them apart makes everything click:

Recording audio into your loops

Turn on "Record microphone audio with recordings" in gear → Microphone. macOS asks for microphone permission once. From then on, every recording carries an audio track alongside the video. Turn it off and recordings stay video-only, which is the safe default for the classic step-away trick: a looped cough at the wrong moment is how you get caught.

Choosing which microphone LoopCam uses

The Device picker at the top of the Microphone section works like the camera picker: "System Default" follows whatever macOS is set to, or you can pin a specific mic. This one choice feeds both recordings and the LoopCam Mic passthrough.

Installing the mic driver

The virtual microphone needs a small audio driver, installed once from gear → Microphone → Install Driver…. It asks for your administrator password because macOS audio drivers live in a system folder (/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL), and it briefly restarts the system audio engine, so music playback may hiccup for a second. No reboot needed.

After the install, two devices exist: LoopCam Mic (the microphone apps select) and LoopCam Audio (an internal output LoopCam plays into; you can ignore it).

Using the LoopCam Mic in a call

1. Install the driver (once), then flip on Enable LoopCam Mic.
2. In Zoom / Meet / OBS, select LoopCam Mic as the microphone, the same way you selected LoopCam as the camera.
3. Optionally turn on "Play the loop's audio while looping". This is off by default and it is the opt-in that makes loops speak.

What the call hears then follows the video automatically:

The magic moment: record a clip of yourself talking (with recording audio on), loop it, and the call hears that clip through LoopCam Mic. Hold the bypass key and both the video and the audio snap back to the real you at the same instant.

Where the sound goes (and doesn't)

Loop audio plays into LoopCam Mic and nowhere else. Your speakers stay silent on purpose: if the loop also played out loud, your real microphone would pick it up, and anything listening would hear everything twice, slightly out of sync. So a silent room while a loop with sound is playing is not a bug; it is the feature working. Judge it by the other side, not by your own ears. The control bar says "audio in LoopCam Mic" in its status line whenever this routing is active.

To confirm it with your own eyes: select LoopCam Mic in your meeting or streaming app and watch its input level meter while the loop plays, or open System Settings → Sound → Input with LoopCam Mic selected. The meter dances while your speakers stay quiet, which is exactly right.

7. Managing recordings

Recordings are plain .mov files in ~/Documents/LoopCam/Recordings, named LoopCam-<date>.mov. Nothing ever leaves your Mac. In gear → Recordings you can:

• Change the folder recordings are saved to.
• Reveal in Finder to browse them.
• Clear All… to move every LoopCam recording in the folder to the Trash. It asks for confirmation first, only touches files LoopCam recorded, and uses the Trash, so nothing is gone until you empty it. If the clip currently looping is among them, the feed switches back to your live camera.

8. Pro & licensing

The Pro toolkit (what's in it) is a one-time $29.99 purchase. Pro features wear a small PRO badge in settings; clicking a locked one shows a single upgrade prompt, never a nag, and the free app keeps working forever without a key.

How the license works, because it is unusual in a good way:

• Checkout and receipts are handled by Paddle, our merchant of record.
• Your license key arrives by email within a minute of purchase.
• Paste it into gear → License → Activate. Verification happens entirely on your Mac with cryptography, not with a server.
• There is no account, no activation limit, and no phone-home. LoopCam makes zero network requests, before and after you buy.
• The key survives reinstalls: it is stored in ~/Library/Application Support/LoopCam.
• Removing a key keeps your Pro settings saved but the app behaves like the free tier until a key is active again. Re-activate and everything comes back exactly as you left it.

9. Troubleshooting